
^^^H^l SKI 

Hi Ili&lisJ 



HGsBH 





r,i;iss 3JTS9.5" 




TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 



TRAVELS 



IN 



PORTUGAL 



BY 






JOHN LATOUCHE. . 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



BY 

THE RIGHT HON. T. SOTHERON ESTCOURT. 



SECOND EDITION. 



G. P. PUTNAM S' SONS, 
FOURTH AVENUE AND TWENTY-THIRD STREET. 

1875. 



-$> 



9 



*,v 



t> 



Gift from 
the Estate of Miss Ruth Putnam 
Sept. 14,1931 




v3 



PREFACE TO EIRST EDITION. 



These Travels were published in consecutive Numbers 
of " The New Quarterly Magazine," under the title 
of Notes of Travel in Portugal. The favourable 
reception they met with from the public press has 
induced me to revise them, to enlarge them con- 
siderably, and to republish them in book form. 
Although, at my publisher's suggestion, I have 
altered the title to the more convenient one of 
Travels in Portugal, I desire to say that they are 
nevertheless nothing more than notes — mental notes, 
for I travelled without any design of future publica- 
tion, and kept no single written memorandum of 
what I did or saw. This I say in apology for the 
somewhat discursive style of my work, and in miti- 
gation of critical judgment. Furthermore, I did not 



▼i PREFACE. 

travel continuously. My travels were interrupted by 
periods of residence; both of which extenuating 
circumstances may, I pray, when I come to be 
reviewed, be taken into consideration. 

In looking over the proof sheets, it has struck 
me that I may have unconsciously magnified the diffi- 
culties in the way of pleasure travelling in Portugal 
I have, therefore, somewhat modified my original 
statements, and in one place I have added a long 
explanatory note. 

I would wish my dissuasion from Portuguese travel 
to be accepted only by the mere tourist — the igno- 
rant, conceited, incurious, moneyed tramp, for whom 
so much deserved contempt has been expressed in 
current literature. Those who go to Portugal to 
enjoy a pleasant winter climate will, as a rule, I 
think, do well to go. Those who go to see a strange 
people with a famous name in European history, to 
watch the successful working of a representative 
Constitution, to study archaeology, ecclesiology, or 
natural history ; or, again, those who simply desire to 
take a month's holiday and a month's relaxation in 
spring, summer, or winter, in a quite new country 
(with no intention to " do " the country in ordinary 



PREFACE. vii 

tourist fashion) will, I think, not regret a visit to 
Portugal. 

For the illustrations to this volume I am indebted 
to the kindness of the Right Honourable Thomas 
Sotheron Estcourt, who has allowed me to choose 
from among a valuable series of finished sketches in 
pen and ink and in sepia, made by him in the course 
of a visit to the Peninsula. These sketches were in 
every case made upon the spot, and to their perfect 
fidelity I can myself testify. After attempting in 
vain to get the delicacy and finish of the drawings 
reproduced by the engraver, I had to fall back on 
photography, and they appear in the shape of re- 
duced facsimiles by means of the Woodbury Type 
process. 

John Latouche. 



PBEFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 



After recording the pleasing circumstance that a 
very large First Edition has been exhausted in rather 
more than two months, I have little to say in this 
Preface to a Second Edition beyond expressing my 
gratitude for the friendly and — what is as import- 
ant to an author — the early reviews of my book 
in the leading journals. By no other means can a 
comparatively unknown and quite unrecommended 
writer bring his literary wares to market ; for the 
very fastidious reading public of Great Britain fol- 
lows the great social law observed by our country- 
men everywhere, and will make no acquaintance with 
a strange author till he be first formally introduced 
to their notice by the critics, the indispensable 
fuglemen of the press, and masters of the ceremonies 
in the society of letters. 

Exception has been taken by the " Times," in the 
course of a full and favourable notice of the " Travels," 
to my apparently " implacable " feelings against the 



x PREFACE. 

Tourist class. It is perhaps true that I have ex 
pressed my objection to one section of this class rather 
freely ; but be it understood that I, no other than a 
tourist myself on many occasions of my life, should be, 
and am the very last person to speak ill of tourists 
generally. I did, indeed, draw a distinction between 
the idle and luxurious tourist and the traveller who 
is in pursuit of something beyond the mere killing 
of his time. The first, I urged, after a considerable 
knowledge of Portugal, would find that country quite 
unsuited to him; the true traveller, on the other 
hand, prepared for rough travelling, and willing to 
pay the price of much discomfort for an increase of 
his knowledge of a curious country and a little-known 
people, would find Portugal very well worth travelling 
in. Again, I have recommended the two chief towns of 
Portugal as health resorts, under some circumstances 
and with some limitations. 

As evidence that I have no desire whatever to 
dissuade the more intelligent class of travellers from 
visiting Portugal, I will even do my utmost to induce 
them to go thither. I hereby confirm the opinion 
expressed in the " Times " review as to the ease with 
which the country can be reached from England. 
" Imagination," says my critic in the " Times," 
" invests the little western kingdom with all the vague 
terrors inspired by the long- continued disturbances 
of the rest of the Peninsula." All of which terrors the 



PREFACE. xi 

reviewer shows to be groundless. The " Times " 
writer might haye gone further, and said that imagi- 
nation plays more pranks than this with travellers. 
It would be safe to say that nine intending sea- 
travellers to Portugal out of every ten expect to have 
to cross the "ever- vexed" Bay of Biscay; this is, 
as any map will show them, a geographical error, 
seeing that their steamer's true course from Ushant 
to Finisterre never once brings them within a line 
drawn between these two points, inside of which line 
only are the turbulent waters of this much-feared bay. 
From all this it may be concluded that this said 
quality of imagination is a very troublesome sort of 
commodity for a traveller — fatal to enterprise. It 
is, indeed, the bane of travellers ; and the Scotch, 
the most daring of all adventurers by sea and land, 
possess either least of this unheroic quality, or have, 
more than other people, the power of suppressing its 
excess. As to which fact, I beg to relate a pleasant 
and appropriate instance which chanced to come 
under my own observation. It happened that a 
Scotch lady, residing in a distant land, desired to 
take a favourite native servant home with her. " Oh, 
madam," objected the woman, " I would willingly go 
with you, but for the sea — I am so terribly afraid of 
it." "The sea!" said her kindly and energetic 
mistress ; " what do you think you will have to do 
with the sea ? You are simply put into a steamer 



xii PREFACE. 

here and taken out at London. Pray, what does 
the sea matter to you ?" The girl went, and found 
that her mistress had been right, and she altogether 
wrong ; and this I think proves what a foolish thing 
is this same imagination, which, for this poor girl, 
had clearly summoned up mountains of waves which 
she personally was to do battle with, sea-devils, 
whales with their huge mouths gaping at her, mon- 
strous spear-nosed fish tilting at her weak body, and 
heaven only knows what beside ; and, compared to 
these horrors, all the nasty realities of steam-boat 
travel, the hot, stuffy, oily smells, the closeness, the 
noise, the nausea, the stewardess — appeared, no 
doubt, quite endurable evils. 

To right-thinking, non-tourist travellers contem- 
plating a visit to Portugal, I commend this anecdote. 
I say to them, " Pray, let your imagination lie in 
abeyance. What have rebellious Carlists, or the 
rough waves of the Bay of Biscay to do with you ? 
You are put into a steamer at London, Liverpool, or 
Southampton, and taken out, in due time, at Lisbon 
or Oporto, safe and sound.' ' 

John Latouche. 
London, 

September 20, 1875. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Vigo — Eeal Travel and Holiday Travel — Choice of a Horse — Lies of 
a Spanish. Horse dealer — Vigo Bay, in connection with British 
Naval History — Serious Quarrel between Guide and Innkeeper's 
Family — Boorishness and Virtues of the Galicians — Story of a 
Zarzuela Actress — Bed and Board of Travellers in Portugal — 
Tuy ; its Gothic Cathedral 1 

CHAPTER II. 

Spanish and Portuguese on the Frontier Line — Travel Southward — 
Banks of Minho — Caminha — Sea Coast — Hospitable Farmer — 
Ghost Stories — The Lobis-homem ; a Grisly Tale — Farm "Work in 
Northern Portugal — Land Tenure and Peasant Farms — Unde- 
scribed Druidical Remains — A District Peopled by Women — 
Anecdote in Testimony of their Good Conduct — Timoleon of 
Cosse . ... 19 

CHAPTER III. 

Vianna — Costume and Looks of the Women — Cheerfulness of the 
People — Their Dances ; their Improvised Singing — River Lima. — 
Unsupported Tradition — Funeral Customs — Surrounding Scenery 
Overpraised — Raptures over Scenery make poor Reading — Home 
of Miranda, the Poet —Reflections on Ill-directed Travel, sug- 
gested by Misadventures of Two British Tourists— Abundant 
Traces of the Moors — Wrong Construction put upon the Author's 
Motives — Belief in Hidden Treasure — Stories in Proof — Precious 
Stones in Portugal— The Crown Jewels ; the Braganza Diamond. 44 

CHAPTER IV, 

Visit to the Gaviarra — Prudery of Portuguese Writers — Decay of 
Literature — View from the Top of Gaviarra— Early Portuguese 
History — Advantages of Travelling on Horseback — Ride through 
the Gerez Mountains and along Spanish Frontier— Wild Birds, 
Beasts and Flowers— Fishing and Shooting not Good in Portu- 
gal — Hill Forts — Legends Connected with One— Mild Religious 
Exercises — Pilgrimages to Shrines 73 



xiv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEE V. 

pagAi 
The Castle of Braganza— Hebrew Type of Face in Braganza— Impor- 
tant Part Played by Jews in Portuguese History— Conversation 
with a Jewish Traveller— His Story of Spinosa — Mirandella — 
Monotonous Cuisine of Well-to-do People in Portugal — Legend 
of the Bruxas— Villa Real ; its Architecture — Eeturn of Enriched 
Adventurers from India and Brazil— Dull Life in Portuguese 
Country Towns— Curious System of Courtship — Anecdote — Des- 
cription of Port Wine Country — Sketch of the History of Port 
Wine — Has a Literature of its Own — The Pass over the Marao 
Mountains 99 



CHAPTEE VI. 

Luxuriance of Vegetation on Western Slopes of Marao Hills — A 
Large Cactus — Affair between General Loison and Portuguese 
Troops at Amarante — Cinque-cento Ornamentation of Church of 
San Groncalo — Sketch of Progress of Christian Architecture in 
Portugal — Legend of Saint Goncalo — Undeserved 111 Eepute of 
People of Amarante — An Unlucky and Foolish Mining Company 
— Curious Waterproof Cloak — Portuguese Peasantry Lineal and 
Unchanged Descendants of Conquerors of the Saracens and 
Castilians — Old Charters — Breed of Horses Crossed with Arab 
Blood in Moorish Times — Vallongo — Its Ancient Gold Mines — A 
Toy Mine at Work— Mining Prospects of Portugal — Oporto — Its 
History — Its Famous Siege — Is the Centre of Political and Com- 
mercial Movement in Portugal — The Douro ; its Dangerous Bar 
— An Old Eoman Beacon 1 27 



CHAPTEE VII. 

Foz,the Brighton of Oporto — Sea Bathing — Douro Boats — The Portu- 
guese a Trafficking People, but not Commercially Adventurous — 
Churches of Oporto — Eemarkable Historical Picture — The Douro 
Passage of, in 1812 — Curious Eeputation of the Douro in Spain — 
Fish and Fishing in the Eiver— Ethnology of Portugal — Variety 
of Eaces — Appearance of the People — Gold Ornaments of Moorish 
Design— Eai I way to Lisbon— Places on the Way — Marsh Scenery 
— Coimbra— Erroneous Tradition about Inez de Castro — Univer- 
sity of Coimbra; its Connection with George Buchanan— Pombal 
— Marquis of Pombal the Bismarck of Portugal— His Life and 
Character— Alcobaca— Batalha, the Battle Abbey of Portugal- 
Its Plateresque Style of Architecture— " Tanias El Eey," mean- 
ing of- Objection to u Interviewing " Eespectable People, and 
Reporting their Conversation— Conversation of Chance Acquain- 
tances very Poor — An Instance 140 



CONTENTS. xv 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE 

Lisbon— Cintra Overpraised — Monserrat, and the Author of Vathelc — 
Moorish Palace Fort at Cintra— Pariah Dogs of Lisbon have 
Ceased to Exist — Dog Hunts — Humanity of the Portuguese — 
Mild Bull Fighting Practised in Portugal — Singular Tameness 
of Domestic Animals — Native Newspapers — Their Timidity and 
Scanty News — Curious System of Avowedly Paid Literary Criti- 
cism — Modern Art Progress in Portugal disappointing— Re- 
pousse Work — Point Lace — Ancient Furniture — Caldas Faience 
— Paintings Deplorable — The Academy Exhibition — Gran Vasco 
and his supposed School 187 

CHAPTER IX. 

From Lisbon to Evora — Lost Fertility of Great South Tagus Plain — 
Fine Roman Remains at Evora— Abundance and Triviality of 
Roman Inscriptions — Elvas — Wrong Choice of a Guide — His 
Blunders, his Ghost Stories, and General Imbecility — Legend of 
the Seven Whistlers — The Guide's Terror— Benighted in a 
Forest— Recovery of Horses and Guide 207 

CHAPTER X. 

Hostess at Monsaras a Shrew — Her Volubility and Use of Proverbs 
— Spanish Frontier — Line of Demarcation Distinct between 
Spanish and Portuguese Character — The Portuguese Language 
— Affectation of the Brazilians — Portuguese Share in " Pigeon 
English " — Portuguese a Living and Growing Language — An 
Instance ; Origin of Word, Fajardismo — An Intelligent Swindle 
— Olivenca, once Portuguese, now Spanish — Radical and Impor- 
tant Difference between Spanish and Portuguese National Cha- 
racter and Institutions 225 

CHAPTER XL 

Juromenha — Desolate Country — Last Stand of Moors of Portugal 
Made in this Region — Final Wars of Moors and Portuguese 
Treacherous and Bloody — Sketch of History of the Great Portu- 
guese Home Crusade — Names of Different Sorts of Christian 
Marauding Expeditions Preserved in Charters to Towns and 
Convents — Mertola — Final and Crowning Misadventure of the 
Guide Francisco 246 

CHAPTER XII. 

Boat Journey down the Guadiana to Villa Nova — Scenery and Botany 
of Province of Algarve— The Locust Tree— Boatmen's Stories — 
The Ginet — Mr. Mason's Successful Mining at San Domingo — 
Embark for Lisbon in a Trading Schooner — The East Wind ; its 
Bad Reputation— Proverbs— The "Rock" of Lisbon; Why so 



xvi CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

called — Viseu — Its Famous Pictures — Gran Vasco— Discussion as 
to his Authorship of Pictures ascribed to him — The Province of 
Beira — Its Unsophisticated Inhabitants — Their Singular Dress 
— Their Probable Origin — Eemarks on Travel Writing — Culture 
and Good Manners and Nature of the People— A Theory Un- 
supported by Facts— A Portuguese Priest — His Stories about 
Wolves — Diminution of Wolves in the Country— Good and In- 
offensive Character of the Priest — His Views on Sport — Through 
Oporto Northward — Monastic Church of Leca do Balio — Des- 
cription of a Pine Forest— Barcellos — A Portuguese School In- 
spection — Farming — Strong Traces of Eoman Farm System— 
" Green Wine j " its Taste and Good Effects — Eecapitulation of 
Impressions of the Portuguese, as a People . . . . 250 

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 

Reasons for Writing a Supplementary Chapter — Influence of the 
Moon in Portugal — The Planting of Cabbages — Spade and Hoe 
Cultivation— Women's Work— Superstitious Notions — The Fat- 
tening of Pigs — The Priests' Influence — Non-Secular Education — 
Cheap Substitute for Newspapers — Hints to Tourists — Ci,..:ate — 
Language — Anecdote — Philistinism — Anecdote — Manners and 
Morals — Management of Forests and Orchards — A Secret in 
Forestal Science — Flower Gardens — A Problem in Agriculture — 
Farm System of Portugal 324 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
Tuy and Valencia. Ponte de Lima. 

VlANNA. AMARANTE. 

Batalha. 




TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL, 



CHAPTER I. 

Vigo — Heal Travel and Holiday Travel — Choice of a Horse — Lies of 
a Spanish Horse-dealer — Vigo Bay, in connection with British 
Naval History — Serious Quarrel between Guide and Innkeeper's 
Family — Boorishness and Virtues of the Galicians — Story of a 
Zarmela Actress — Bed and Board of Travellers in Portugal — Tuy 
its Gothic Cathedral. 

Landing at Vigo, in the ancient kingdom of Galicia, 
the traveller is only nine leagues from the northern 
frontier of Portugal ; and he may make his prepara- 
tions for a journey into that country with as great 
advantage in Vigo as in any of the larger towns 
of Portugal itself. If he is in haste, and wants 
rather to have seen the country and the people 
than to see them, let him take the diligence, which 
will hurry and jolt him along a road leading due 
south, over the Spanish frontier, through the town 
of Vianna, and the city of Braga, to Oporto. At 
this latter city he may take the train, and, still 

going due south, will make for Lisbon; stopping 

l 



2 T1UVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

for a day, perhaps, to look at the architectural 
splendours of Batalha and Alcobaca. From Lisbon 
he will visit the cool retreats of Cintra. He will 
take a hasty railway trip south of Lisbon, through 
a hideously barren country, to Setubal ; another to 
the west, through an uninteresting country, to 
Evora ; and he will, on finding himself at Lisbon 
again (and, if I am not mistaken, with no small 
satisfaction), take his passage in the first steamer 
for London or Southampton, and his report 
upon the country he thinks he has seen will be — 
" Portugal is thoroughly uninteresting ; the country 
in parts is pretty but not remarkable, in parts it is 
a barren wilderness. The people are inaccessible 
from the difficulties of a language which does not 
appear worth learning, and therefore of their 
manners, habits, or customs, it is difficult to say 



anything." 



JS T ow, a man needs not to be of that order of 
traveller who will journey from Dan to Beersheba, 
and say, " all is barren," to arrive very honestly at 
this conclusion ; and yet the country is not in fault, 
only his mode of trying to see it wrong ; and I hope 
to show, in the following pages, that the verdict of 
my supposititious traveller is unjust in every parti- 
cular. 

Portugal is as yet virgin soil, so far as the 
British tourist is concerned. No preparations have 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 3 

as yet been made for him, hardly any one speaks his 
language, no inn-keeper expects to see him, no guide 
is ready to show him the lions. 

There is a large class of travellers who should 
avoid Portuguese travel — those who are impelled 
to foreign journeying less because they care for it 
than because all their friends travel, and who, driven 
from England by that " oestrum " which flies abroad 
in the autumn months, not unreasonably like to find 
all the comforts of home during their holiday in 
foreign lands. Let not any of the migrant tribe 
who propose to travel in established tourist fashion, 
visit Portugal. Even Spain has greater, nay, along 
beaten tracks, great facilities for the luxurious 
tourist. Yet the obstacles to profitable travelling 
in Portugal — profitable in the sense of learning 
something of the people and of their ways — are, 
after all, but few. Unfortunately, first among them 
stands the language, and, without a fair command 
of it, let no traveller venture. It is a language 
which few people think it worth while to acquire ; 
moreover, it is a difficult language, easy enough 
to learn to read, but far harder to speak than 
either Spanish or Italian. This is the chief 
obstacle; another is the extraordinary badness of 
food and lodging along the road. Sour wine, stale 
oil, black bread, and dried fish are the staples in 
the less frequented districts. Another is the abso- 



4, TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

lute necessity, if it is desired to see the real beauty 
of Portuguese scenery and to study the lives and 
manners of the people, that the traveller should 
journey chiefly on horseback ; for the few carriage 
roads, as a rule, pass through the least picturesque 
and interesting parts of the country. I know of no 
other difficulties, and, on the other hand, Portuguese 
travel has its good side ; there are no brigands, and 
the people are well-tempered and well-mannered, 
very obliging and very hospitable.* 

The present writer does not propose to write a 
regular itinerary of his travels in Portugal ; for, in 
truth, he has journeyed over many dreary leagues 
of road on which he would be sorry to ask for the 
reader's company. His object will be to carry him 
rapidly from one point of interest to another, and 
tell him what he has learned in his travels of the 
ways of life of a very singular and interesting people. 
Nevertheless, the reader who shall follow him will 
have quite enough of the usual incidents of horse- 
back travel, of roadside inns, of good landlords 
and bad ones, of kind welcomes and of cold ones. 

There is now, I am told, an excellent hotel at 
Vigo, kept by a German with a French wife. There 
is, therefore, the less occasion for me to dwell on 

* This warning, be it observed, applies only to tourists : not, as 
shall hereafter be set forth, to persons intending to reside — perma- 
nently or temporarily — in the country. 



TRAVELS W PORTUGAL. 5 

the fact that no excellence of the kind existed at the 
time of my visit, which was made several years ago. 

Since that time a French scientific expedition has 
taken up its quarters at Vigo. The work they have 
before them is the recovery of the treasure believed 
to have sunk with the Spanish galleons which had 
taken shelter in Vigo, in the year "J 702, during the 
War of the Succession, when the combined French 
and Spanish fleets were attacked by Sir George 
Rooke, in command of a Dutch and English squad- 
ron, and the town was stormed by three thousand 
men, under the command of the Duke of Ormond. 

My first and, in fact, my only object in remain- 
ing even a single hour in Vigo was to buy a horse 
for my journey. With this view, and without men- 
tioning my purpose at the inn, for landlords are 
only too apt to be in league with roguish horse- 
dealers, I sallied forth to discover for myself the 
equine capabilities of the place. I had made the 
tour of the town and was coming back, without 
seeing anything desirable, when I perceived a 
gentleman in high boots with immense silver spurs, 
a well-used velveteen jacket, and a dirty red sash 
wound several times round his waist. This person 
was leaning against the wall of a dark entry leading 
from the street, and had so evident an expression in 
his face, attitude and bearing, of some sort of proprie- 
torship in horseflesh, that I instantly accosted him. 



6 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

I was correct in my surmise. He told me that 
lie was the possessor of about twenty of the very 
finest mares in Spain ; " every one of which," said 
the horse-dealer, taking off his hat and making me 
a bow, "is at your Excellency's service." 

I followed the man along the vaulted passage 
into a large stable. My eyes getting in time used 
to the gloom of the place, I could perceive the in- 
distinct forms of some twenty or thirty under- sized 
ponies ; some tied up to mangers running round 
the walls, and some fastened to the numerous stone 
pillars which supported the roof. I looked with 
some dismay at their diminutive bodies and gene- 
rally "weedy" appearance. 

Horse-dealing is a serious matter in all countries, 
but in none more so than in Spain, where a bargain, 
even for the hire of a pack mule or a guide's pony* 
is approached with the utmost circumspection and 
gravity. 

" Sir," I said, addressing the horse-dealer, with 
a suitable solemnity ; " pray look well at me, and 
having done so, inform me to which of these animals 
you recommend me to confide my person for a 
journey of some three or four hundred miles." 

My companion gravely and politely removed 
his hat for the purpose of the desired inspection,, 
and having concluded it, he replied — 

" Caballero, I perceive that you are a person 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 7 

not to be imposed upon. These animals you have 
seen are certainly not worthy nor indeed capable 
of carrying your distinguished person. 5 ' And thus 
he went on with a blarneying speech of great length 
and volubility, ending by telling me that he possessed 
one horse of quite superlative excellence. Descant- 
ing on the way upon the merits of this particular 
animal, he led me to its stable. 

Knowing the ways of horse-jockeys — knowing 
that a horse is praised by them generally in inverse 
ratio to his merits — I was not a little surprised to 
find, in a small separate stable to which the dealer 
conducted me, a strong, good-looking horse of the 
Andalusian breed, apparently sound in wind and 
limb. 

The dealer led him out into the street, saddled 
him with the cumbrous saddle of the country, and 
put a bridle in his mouth. He mounted him. The 
horse's action was as good as his looks. I asked the 
price with some anxiety, for I saw that the perform- 
ance of my journey on horseback was dependent upon 
getting this horse. After a great deal of tedious 
bargaining, I obtained him for twenty-five pounds ; 
no doubt much more than the horse's market value, 
but he was a fairly good one, and did me very good 
service. 

My plans were to make at once for Tuy, on the 
E/iver Minho, which is the northern boundary of Por- 



8 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

tugal, and there or at Valenca, the Portuguese town 
which is on the opposite side of the river, to procure 
an active servant to accompany me upon the Portu- 
guese portion of my journey. My preparations were 
soon made. A good English saddle I had brought 
with me ; also a pair of regulation cavalry pistols, 
and holsters for them. At Visro I bought a true 
Spanish cloak of stout broadcloth, a saddle-cloth, a 
pair of capacious saddle-bags, arid I was ready. I 
might have carried all my baggage on the stout An- 
dalusian, and ridden to Tuy in a day by the high 
road ; but I had a reason for wishing to keep along 
the sea-shore. Asking the horse-dealer for a guide 
over the mountains by the sea, he proposed to accom- 
pany me himself, remarking, however, that the road 
was bad, and the people along it no better than the 
road. 

At daybreak the following morning we made our 
start. Skirting the magnificent Bay of Yigo for a 
mile, we soon began the ascent of a steep mountain, 
and continued, till the sun was pretty high, ascend- 
ing a good deal, and now and then descending a little. 
Presently the whole bay was spread out like a map 
beneath our feet. The day was calm, and the steep 
hills and white houses, with their verandahs and 
projecting eaves, were reflected as in a looking-glass. 

Fine as the scene before me was, there was a 
certain human interest about this bay which far out- 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 9 

weighs any admiration for it as scenery. Some 
very momentous episodes of our own history have 
been transacted within sight of these hills, and 
evidences thereof cannot but be lying at this mo- 
ment beneath the quiet waters of the bay. If, by a 
miracle, they could be lifted for an instant, we should 
see such a sight as would realize Clarence's dream. 
We should look upon 



u Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearls, 
Inestimable stones, unvalued gems, 
All scattered in the bottom of the sea." 

Looking from the hill- side on the bay, I forgot 
all about its beauties in the fancy of how many brave 
deeds might have been witnessed from the hill-side 
on which I was standing. From this spot a specta- 
tor might have seen the entry of Drake's squadron 
in Elizabeth's reign, and have counted the men on 
the decks — seen them work their guns upon the 
town, and felt the earth shake to the booming of the 
heavy artillery from the castles overhead. I suspect 
that our tiny English ships, moving quickly about, 
ran no great risk from the plunging fire of the Spanish 
gunners, and that the affair was rather a one-sided 
one. A far better show must have been the capture 
of the galleons by Rooke and the Dutch, when five 
of the huge treasure vessels of Spain were set on 
fire, and eleven borne away by their captors. It 
must have been a very gallant sight, and be sure that 



10 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

the traces of that fight still lie under the waves of 
Vigo Bay, and that there is a rich prize there well 
worth the seeking for. 

The rocky island which is seen from where I 
stand, and which, with its sister island, not now 
visible, commands the entrance to the bay, is Bayona; 
and, high up on its southern face, I make out what 
my guide assured me are the remains of ancient 
fortifications. There is an infinitesimally small lite- 
rary difficulty connected with Bayona which caused 
me to choose to ride along the sea-shore to Tuy, 
.rather than along the high-road. 

The question is whether it is this Bayona to which 
Milton refers in the lines — 

" "Where the great vision of the guarded mount 
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold ;" 

or whether it is the little seaport of Bayona, lying a 
few miles farther south. My own strong impression, 
after seeing both places, is that Milton meant the 
islands, " Bayona's hold " being equivalent to 
" Bayona's fortress," and being taken to signify 
Vigo Bay, its castle and its fortified islands. I do 
not see how such a place as Bayona, the town, could 
even have been heard of by Milton ; while, when he 
wrote " Lycidas," events had taken place near 
" Bayona's hold" which, though they occurred some 
fifty years before, would have made its geography 
familiar enough to British ears. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 11 

I now turned my face southwards, and in a few 
hours we saw the white houses of Bayona on one 
side of a little bay. It is a place, as I had been led 
to believe, of little importance, and my bird's-eye 
view of it quite satisfying me, I left it to the right, 
and, against the advice of my guide, made across the 
mountains south-eastward, in order to strike the 
high-road which I knew ran due north and south 
from Yigo to Tuy. I trusted to a pocket compass 
when I should have listened to the guide ; neverthe- 
less, after a weary ride, and after entangling our- 
selves more than once in a labyrinth of steep hills, 
we did, at last, suddenly come upon the high-road. 

Shortly afterwards the diligence from Yigo over- 
took us, and I recognized two French gentlemen 
inside whose acquaintance I had made at the hotel at 
Yigo, and whom I had earnestly besought not to 
entrust themselves to the abominable conveyance in 
which they were imprisoned. They looked supremely 
miserable as they passed by in a stifling cloud of dust, 
jolted, jammed, and deafened by the rattle of the ill- 
fitting box on wheels. 

" That is not the fitting way for gentlemen to go 
through the country," said the horse-dealer, ranging 
his little mare up to my side. 

" You are right," I said, for the proverb says, 
" c A good man on a good horse is a servant to no 
man.' " 



12 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

"It is a good proverb," said the horse dealer, 
" though I never heard it before, for these gentlemen 
who saluted your worship will soon find that they are 
no longer their own masters ; they must eat, sleep, 
get down and up, not when they please, but when 
they are told by the coachman ; whereas the Cabal- 
lero here does what he likes, stops where he pleases, 
and eats and lodges when, where, and how he 
chooses." 

The horse-dealer could not better have summed 
up the advantages of travelling on horseback in Por- 
tugal. 

We had rested once in the hills at a farmhouse, 
and begged a little straw and water for our horses, 
and now ao-ain we looked about for the bush hun^ 
over the house door, the old conventional sign of an 
inn. Houses of any kind were scarce, however, and 
night was coming on, and we were within a few miles 
of Tuy before we found what we wanted, a little one- 
storied inn where we could bait the horses. 

" The people in these parts," said my companion, 
sententiously, " are a bad lot." 

Certainly those we had had to do with to-day 
were as surly and sullen a set of peasants as I ever 
encountered ; but, as virtue is commonly reported to 
reside in a rough exterior, I will not undertake to 
endorse the opinion of the horse-dealer. 

Asking for horse provender at the inn, we got 



TRAVELS m PORTUGAL. 13 

monosyllabic answers and black looks ; not a finger 
was stirred to help us. Finally, we tied up our own 
horses, and, discovering a secret store of corn, helped 
them liberally thereto. The inn-keeper found his 
tongue, as we were leaving, to ask an exorbitant 
payment; bat, having given what we knew was 
just, we would not yield an inch, whereupon the 
whole family set up a chorus of execration. The 
man, his wife, and apparently countless brothers, 
sisters, and children, flocked into the stable to bellow, 
and yell, and scream in all keys at us. Amid this 
fearful outcry we composedly mounted our horses, 
and charged through the family at a fair cavalry trot. 
The enemy was routed, but re-formed outside the 
gate, and fired a parting volley of abuse as we rode 
off; whereupon the horse-dealer, losing the temper 
and equanimity which he had hitherto preserved, 
turned short round, and, standing up in his stirrups, 
raised his right hand threateningly, and, spurring his 
mare hither and thither in his wrath in front of the 
hostile lines, execrated and defied them. 

So, it is related, did that redoubtable Moorish 
champion, lbn-1-Walid, in like hostile and defiant 
manner, prick forth upon his charger before the 
long-drawn lines of Christian warriors, and, by the 
mere vigour of his speech and fierceness of his 
gesture, carry consternation into the ranks of the 
Christian host. 



14 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

The Moorish champion, however, had the advan- 
tage over the horse-dealer in this respect, for the 
latter seemed to carry no consternation whatever 
into the ranks of the inn-keeper's family ; and the 
encounter might have lasted far into the night, if I 
had not gently led away my champion by the arm. 
We rode off, but it was some time ere he recovered 
his serenity. He had, however, given me an oppor- 
tunity of learning that a horse-dealer in Galicia, like 
persons of the same profession in England, excels all 
his countrymen in his command of strong language. 

The Galician peasant is, in truth, an uncouth 
being ; but he can take a certain amount of polish. 
It is a good material. The Galician is the Auvergnat 
of the Peninsula, and especially of Portugal. Of a 
hundred men-servants, coachmen, grooms, porters, 
and water-carriers, in the larger towns of Portugal, 
ninety-nine are Galicians. The rusticity, awkward- 
ness, and slowness of the Galician have become pro- 
verbial. Of an ill-bred man the Portuguese say all 
when they say, " "What a Galician ! " A coarse ex- 
pression is a " Gallegada" — a Galicianism. The 
epithet "Galician" is even used as an equivalent of 
wild, common, or uncultivated : the crab-apple is, 
with the Portuguese, the Galician apple ; the common 
cabbage of Portugal, which grows a yard or more in 
height, is the " Couve Gallega " — the Galician cab- 
bage ; and so forth. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL, 15 

I remember once, in Lisbon, seeing an exceed- 
ingly pretty young Spanish lady, the prima donna of 
a Zarzuela troupe, assume the character of a 
Galician servant with great success. The Zarzuela 
actors are chartered buffoons, by no means tied down 
by any of the traditions or prescriptions of the 
legitimate drama. Their only object is to entertain ; 
and they sing, dance, and declaim their burlesque 
operettas with the greatest spirit. On this particular 
occasion, however, the piece dragged; the audience 
would not be amused; the songs were stale, the 
dances old, the dialogue known by heart — when 
suddenly, with true histrionic inspiration, the pretty 
prima donna advanced to the foot-lights, and began 
a serio-comic remonstrance with the audience in the 
character of a Galician servant who has been found 
fault with. 

It was really an admirable improvisation. As 
she came forward, her step lost the graceful firm- 
ness of the true Zarzuela dancer; her movements 
became stiff, angular, and slouching; her voice 
changed the quick ring of the Andalusian tongue for 
the drawl of the Galician brogue ; her face assumed 
the semi-idiotic stare of a stupid servant. The effect 
was magical. We all had our Galician servant ; we 
all recognized that drawl, that slouch, and that 
expression. In theatrical phrase, it brought the 
house down. After this, the piece went on 



16 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

swimmingly; and if, for a moment, the audience 
seemed not sufficiently responsive to the efforts of 
the actors, one look of remonstrance, in character, 
from the fair actress, or one of those familiar 
gestures, was enough to bring back its gaiety and 
its attention in an instant. 

Now, all this is one side of the picture. If the 
Galician is rough, he is honest ; if he is a boor, he is 
a faithful one. Better men-servants can hardly be 
found; clean, sober, attentive, good-tempered, and 
hard-working, they very soon learn to accommodate 
themselves to the ways and habits of the family. A 
very little intercourse with better-mannered people 
than themselves serves to rub off their native 
asperities. They grow attached to masters who 
treat them well, and it is common enough for a 
Galician servant to srrow white-headed in faithful 
service with the master who engaged him as a boy. 

It was quite dark before we reached Tuy, and 
therefore we had to put up at the inn there for the 
night; having travelled no more than nine or ten 
leagues, in a straight line, since daybreak. 

At Tuy I had not, at any rate, to begin any 
sort of commissariat troubles. Almost everywhere 
in Spain there is good bread, and Tuy is celebrated 
for its hams and for its wine. 

"When the tired and hungry traveller in Portugal 
is nearing his resting-place for the night, two 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 17 

thoughts sufficiently prosaic are apt to engross his 
attention — his board and his bed. As to the former, 
there is room for speculation. There is immense 
variety ; he may arrive late at night, and find black 
bread, sour wine, and sourer looks. On the other 
hand, his senses may be pleasantly assailed, as he 
crosses the threshold of his inn, by the steam of the 
simmering stew ; and he may be gladdened by 
friendly looks, and a kind invitation to partake of 
the family supper. 

As to the other point — his bed — let the traveller 
not speculate. Here there is no variety. A Penin- 
sular bedroom is a fearful thing, A door that will 
not fasten, windows that were never intended to 
open, a floor, through the chinks of which the mules 
and horses, which invariably have their lodging 
beneath, can be seen and heard, and an atmosphere 
composed of the emanations of their stables. A 
bed, of which it is enough to say that the expe- 
rienced traveller will instantly throw all its cover- 
ings to the further end of the room, and recline upon 
it involved in his own cloak, plaids, or rugs. 

Tuy possesses a small Gothic cathedral, which, 
so far as I could judge from the outside, is of very 
early date. The building is remarkable for its 
enormous solidity, and the small size of the windows 
and their height from the ground. The original 
work is pure Romanesque, pointing to a date early 

2 



18 TRAVELS W PORTUGAL. 

in the twelfth century; a period when some fears 
might be entertained of an irruption of the Saracens, 
and Christians might look to having to defend them- 
selves on a sudden. I was disappointed at not being 
able to get inside the cathedral, which promised 
from its exterior to be interesting. Gothic buildings 
are so scarce in Portugal that one hardly likes to 
leave one behind unvisited on the confines of that 
kingdom. 



CHAPTER II. 

Spanish and Portuguese on the Frontier Line — Travel Southward — 
Banks of Minho — Caminha — Sea Coast — Hospitable Farmer — 
Ghost Stories — The Lobis-homem ; a Grisly Tale — Farm Work in 
Northern Portugal — Land Tenure and Peasant Farms — Undts- 
cribed Druidical Remains — A District Peopled by Women — Anec- 
dote in Testimony of their Good Conduct — Timoleon of Cosse. 

Theee are few things which seem so strange to a 
British traveller, the boundary of whose country is 
the sea, and who has, fortunately, no experience of 
arbitrary frontier lines, as to see how an invisible 
line of demarcation can as completely separate one 
nation from another, so far as any identity of 
manners and customs is concerned, as long miles of 
ocean or impassable mountain ranges. 

The Spanish town of Tuy is divided only by the 
river Minho from the Portuguese town of Valenca. 
Looked at by the traveller going southwards, the 
houses of the two towns seem to form but one. A 
good swimmer would cross from the Spanish to the 
Portuguese bank in a few minutes ; a stone thrown 
from the streets of Tuy might fall among the houses 
of Valenca. And yet, though they are such near 



20 TRAVELS IX PORTUGAL. 

neighbours, the inhabitants of either town are, in 
customs, habits, manners, and dress, almost as dis- 
tinct as the people of Dover and those of Calais. 
What makes the present distinction the more re- 
markable is, that it is almost certain that the races 
are identical. Perhaps it would be safer to say that 
they contain the same constituents, though probably 
in different proportions. So nearly identical, indeed, 
are they, that the frontier line of Portugal and 
Galicia shifted continually during the Middle Ages. 

The reason why Portuguese life flows up to 
Valenca, and no further, and why Spanish life is 
suddenly arrested at Tuy, is of course easy enough 
to find. If the people of the one town had had free 
access to those of the other, and had bought and 
sold with them ; if the old men and women had had 
full liberty of gossiping with each other; if the 
youths of one towm could have wooed the maidens 
of the other; — then it would have been different. 
But to all this there have always been two bar- 
riers—the conscription and the customs duties. To 
cross the frontier, it is necessary to be provided with 
a pass, and all who do so cross are, of course, sub- 
jected to examination for contraband goods. It is 
these restrictions, acting through many hundred 
years, which have worked the results we see, in spite 
of race and in spite of propinquity. 

At those points where the Portuguese and Spanish 



TEA VEL8 IN PORTUGAL. 21 

races are conterminous, the Portuguese is, at least 
as far as my observation goes, the better looking, 
better dressed, and better mannered of the two. 
Nowhere is this so conspicuous as on the Minho. 
The contrast here, however, is heightened by the 
fact, that the Portuguese of Eatre Douro e Minho — 
the province, that is, lying between the Douro and the 
Minho — are as far superior in the above respects to 
other Portuguese as the Galicians fall short — in the 
same matters — of men of the other provinces of 
Spain. 

Leaving Valenca early in the morning, we followed 
the course of the Minho to the sea, passing on the 
way the fortified town of Villa Nova da Cerveira, 
and the little harbour and town of Caminha, sur- 
rounded by flats and marshes, with its outlying 
island fortress ; then, again striking southward by 
the sea- shore, through a half, cultivated region which 
in former times was a Royal forest, we reached a 
gloomy-looking fortress, close to the sea; the first 
of a series which continues along: the whole coast- 
line of the province of the Minho. 

Towards nightfall we overtook a farmer on horse- 
back, and when, after riding on in friendly conversa- 
tion with him for a mile or so, I asked him how far 
off I might be from an inn and shelter for the night, 
he good-humouredly laughed at the idea of my con- 
descending to put up at any place nearer than Vianna. 



22 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

On my telling him that I was by no means particu- 
lar, and that my guide's horse was too tired for 
further travelling, he drew up his horse to a stand- 
still, and looked hard at me. 

" There is a house about one mile from here," 
said the farmer ; " you will get poor fare and poor 
shelter, but none better, I think, on this side of 
Vianna. I will show you the way," he added. 

So saying, he trotted on, and soon turning aside 
from the main road, guided us along a vile ox-cart 
road, the worst of all roads to ride over in a bad 
light. For about a mile we travelled up a narrow 
valley. On each side of the road grew pollarded 
oaks and chestnuts, whose branches were twisted so 
as to join overhead ; and on these trees were trained 
vines, whose foliage, though it was only May, already 
gave a dense shade. 

Presently this narrow road opened out into a 
square walled enclosure, which was also perfectly 
embowered and shaded by vines, carried on stout 
rafters of wood, the whole supported by the side 
walls, and by five or six stone pillars in the centre ; 
so that the place was like a huge room, the ceiling of 
which was of vine leaves. It was, in fact, the court- 
yard of a good- sized farm-house. 

The farmer stopped at the door of the house 
which opened on to this yard. 

" Why," I said to him, " this is a private house." 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 23 

"It is the house of your Excellency," said the 
farmer, as he stood uncovered, with the true cour- 
teous hospitality of an old-fashioned Portuguese. 

It was, in truth, his own house ; and presently a 
man appeared, to take our horses, a dog came and 
licked the master's hand, children issued from the 
house and greeted their father, and the wife stood in 
the doorway and welcomed us. 

"Cea! cea!" the farmer called out cheerfully, 
which, interpreted, is supper, a pleasant sound to a 
belated traveller. " Here is a gentleman who has 
eaten nothing since he was in Spain." 

Looking round the room we entered, I saw much 
that I should have seen in a farmer's kitchen at 
home : the old single-barrelled gun slung on the 
wall, the English willow-pattern plates ranged on 
the shelves, the well-polished high-backed chairs, the 
sides of bacon hanging from the rafters. What was 
not like England was the quaint collection of coloured 
prints of sacred subjects — pious daubs, fearful to the 
artistic eye — which hung about the walls. 

Presently our supper was on the table, and let the 
reader take note that the table was not decked with 
a cloth " coarse, but of snowy whiteness." Indeed, 
for the matter of that, we did not even indulge in 
plates, but before each of us was placed a good-sized 
earthenware bowl and a wooden spoon. And if the 
reader should ask of what the meal consisted, let 



24 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

him know that there was one dish and a remove. 
The dish, Sopa secca, literally " dry soup," made of 
wheaten bread, beef, cabbage, and mint, almost a 
national dish in Portugal ; and the remove, Bacal- 
hau, dried codfish, boiled — which is quite a national 
dish — and the man who objects to such a bill of fare, 
must, indeed, be an epicure. 

I praised the fish for its tenderness, and my 
hostess explained to me that to make it so it was 
essential that the dried fish — which, indeed, is often, 
when cooked, as hard as a board — should be pre- 
viously soaked for exactly eighteen hours in running 
water. 

Then the host filled me a lar^e tumbler of 
country wine, his own vintage, assuring me that 
wine never tastes so well as after Bacalhau. It is 
a very remarkable drink, this " green wine," as it is 
called. I have tasted the country wines of many 
lands, but never yet such a one as this. Perfectly 
sound, but possessing a fruitiness, astringency, and 
sharpness enough to take one's breath away, it has 
yet little more alcoholic strength than claret. So 
fall is it of what may be called vinous matter, that 
it is hardly ever clear; it is apparently, however, 
not liked the less for being quite thick and muddy. 
To an exhausted man, on a summer's day, I know 
no greater restorative than a full draught of this 
Minho wine. i 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 25 

When we had eaten and drunk, the dishes were 
pushed " below the salt," and one or two of the 
farm servants fell to. on the plentiful remainder; whilst 
we, wrapping ourselves in our cloaks, and leaning 
our elbows on the table, lighted our cigarettes, and 
proceeded to hold grave discourse. 

Knowing that my host must be curious to be 
told where I came from, and the purpose of my 
travelling, I thought it due to his hospitality to 
offer him a sketch of my proceedings, in which I 
was assisted by the horse-dealer, who, after the 
manner of such squires, added fancy details illus- 
trative of the magnificence, wisdom, and so forth, 
of his master. I ended by saying that I was going 
to travel through Portugal at my pleasure, and to 
see whatever was curious, or worthy to be seen by a 
foreigner. 

The farmer nodded his head slowly once or 
twice, as I finished. The idea was too strange 
to him to be taken in at once ; at last he got firm 
hold of it. 

" Your country, I dare say, is very different from 
Portugal," he said. 

"Very different," I answered. "You may 
understand how much so when I tell vou that our 

t/ 

farmers neither grow maize nor make wine ? ,: 

" Coitadinhos ! " (poor devils ! ) said the man ; 
" then what do they eat and drink ? " 



26 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

u Well," I said, " it is not so difficult as you 
may think. We can make all sorts of things in 
England, and sell them to all countries, and then 
buy what we want from them. For instance — there 
is the shirt you wear — it was made in England, and 
that gun, it was made there, too ; so, you see, if we 
wanted to eat maize, or drink wine, we should have 
something to offer in exchange." 

" Wonderful! " cried the farmer, quite delighted. 
It was clear that he had never been lectured before 
on political economy. 

We talked on many matters. At last I thought 
of questioning the farmer on a subject which has 
always had a great interest for me — the super- 
stitious beliefs and tales of the peasantry. 

I have long held a theory, that wherever the 
Romans have left permanent marks of their stay, 
there the superstitions have the peculiar gloomy 
stamp of the legendary mysteries of ancient Italy. 
If this is true anywhere, it must be true in Portugal, 
where these people have left their vestiges not only 
i?i the language, which is nearer to Latin than any 
other known tongue, but even in the manner of 
cultivating the soil, which, to this day, is done in 
accordance with the precepts of Cato and Columella. 

The type of Latin legend to which I refer, is 
that well-known and most grisly and hideous of 
all ghost stories, the tale of the soldier in Petronius 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 27 

Arbiter. Now the belief in trie " Lobis-homem " is 
very prevalent in parts of Northern Portugal. It 
is the legend of the Loup-garou — the Wehrwolf — 
the periodical transformation of human beings into 
wolves, with all the savage instincts of that animal. 
It is a superstition whose existence in many 
countries has been too well investigated to need 
further description from me; suffice it to say, 
that nowhere is this belief invested with so many 
peculiar and gloomy circumstances as in Portugal. 

I began to sound the farmer on the subject of 
folk-lore and popular superstitions rather cautiously, 
for people are apt to be reticent in talking of these 
matters to strangers, but the farmer was not shy 
at all. 

"Yes," he said; "he had known some strange 
things to happen, and in that very neighbourhood, 
too." 

" Would he tell me what ? " 

" Well, he would," he said, " and with great 
pleasure ; he would tell me one of the most singu- 
lar things he ever heard of; but," looking at me 
doubtfully, " you will hardly bring yourself to 
believe it ; and, to tell the truth, no more should 
I, if it had not been related to me by one who saw 
it — no other than my own brother's son. 

"You must know," said the farmer, with a 
grave air, " that not many miles from this is a 



28 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

river, in which are vast quantities of fish. Now, 
every year there comes a stranger to this river ; 
he stands upon the bank, and holding in his hand 
a magical fly — uma mosca encantada — tied to the 
end of a very long thread, he blows the fly away 
from him as far as a man can throw a stone; it 
falls upon the water, and no sooner does it touch 
the surface than a fish seizes it, and the stranger 
draws both fly and fish ashore by the thread which 
he holds in his hand. Now, what do you think of 
that ? " 

My host had given me this fancy description of 
fly-fishing with so very serious a face, that I was 
almost afraid to laugh, till I observed a sympa- 
thetic twinkle in his own eyes ; but he nodded 
towards his servants as if to hint that I was not 
to betray the secret of the mysterious fisherman 
to them. 

Then the farmer, perceiving that I was an atten- 
tive and by no means a captious listener, began 
another story. 

" We are all good Christians here, and ought not 
to fear the malice of the evil spirit ; nevertheless, 
we know that power is given him sometimes to 
work mischief in some mysterious manner, which all 
the priests put together do not understand. In 
proof of this, I will tell you of an event that 
happened not twenty years ago ; and, moreover, I 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 29 

was myself a witness of what I am going to relate, 
for I was then a young man, living at a farm near 
Cabrasam, among the mountains of the Estrica, 
which is, as you know, as wild a country as any in 
Portugal." 

The farmer filled up his own and my glass, and 
his wife and children and the servants gathered 
round us and stood, with solemn faces, to listen to a 
tale which they had probably already heard more 
than once. 

" The farmer with whom I served was a young 
man, and his wife a young woman. He had just 
come on to the farm. Two or three other men 
besides myself worked with him, but there was no 
other woman in the place than his wife. Now, she 
being about to give birth to a child, desired to get 
another woman into the house, to do such work as 
she would shortly not be able to perform herself. 
So the master went about the country to engage a 
woman, but, for some reason or other, he could not 
succeed. As time pressed, he sent me to the nearest 
town, Ponte de Lima, with directions to inquire 
along the way, and engage the very first likely look- 
ing young woman I should meet with. 

" I started next morning before daylight, and 1 
had not gone more than a mile on the road before I 
saw, sitting by the wayside, one of the queerest look- 
ing girls my eyes ever fell on. She was wrapped up, 



SO TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

head and all, in a brown cloak, such as we never see 
in this part of the country. The sun had just risen, 
and she was stretching out her hands as if to warm 
them in its rays. The oddest thing about her was 
that her hair was cut close to her head, like a man's. 
Now, this is common enough with our women when 
they get old and do not care to be troubled with long 
hair ; but for a young and handsome girl like her to 
be ' chamorra' (crop-haired), was a thing I have 
never seen before or since. So I stood still and 
stared at her, like a fool as I was. 

" c Well, Santinho,' * said the girl, c you are won- 
dering to see me warm my hands in the sunbeams ? ' 

" * I think you would get warm quicker,' I 
answered, c if you went on your way, instead of 
sitting still in this cold wind.' 

" ' And what if I am tired, as well as cold ? ' she 
said, sharply. 

" i Have you been travelling all the night ? ' 

" c Indeed, I have,' said the girl, ' and many a one 
before that.' 

" ' Then you come from a long way off? ' 

" ' I come from Tarouca, in the mountains of 
Beira, and that is a long journey from here.' 

" ' And if it is not a secret, what have you come 
so far from home for ? ' 

* Literally, " Little Saint " — a common form of address, among 
the peasantry, from one stranger to another. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 31 

" ' No secret at all,' she replied. c My name is 
Joana, and I am looking for a place as servant at a 
farm. Do you know any one who requires one ? ' 

"Now, it struck me here was the very thing I 
was looking for — a strong, hearty-looking girl, who 
wished to be a servant ; so I told her I was out with 
the object of engaging such a person as herself, and 
if she would come with me to my master's, she 
might find the place she wanted. The girl expressed 
her readiness, and we started homewards. 

"I left her outside the house while I went in* 
The farmer did not much like the idea of having so 
strange a being for a servant ; but his wife 3 hearing 
that she was a e chamorra,' insisted upon engaging 
her — for we have a saying that c chamorras' make 
the best of workers. 

"Very soon after this the child was born, and the 
new girl took the mistress's place — cooked for us 
and so forth. 

" Now, the newly-born infant was a remarkably 
fine and healthy one. Everybody said so, except 
one old woman — a neighbour — who was thought to 
be a c wise woman.' This person looked rather put 
out the moment she saw the child, and said it was 
bewitched. The father and mother laughed heartily 
at this, seeing how well the child looked. Then the 
woman said she was mistaken if the child had not 
the devil's mark somewhere on its skin ; and. sure 



32 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

enough, so it had— a mark on its shoulder, exactly 
as if the pattern of a small crescent or half-moon 
had been pricked upon the skin with a pin. Then 
we all began to get frightened, but the woman said 
there was no cause for alarm, except during the time 
of the new moon, and then the child must be 
watched all the night through. 

" When the old woman passed out of the house, 
the new servant was sitting on the floor with her 
brown cloak pulled right over her face, and though 
the old woman spoke to her, she made her no answer, 
pretending to be asleep. 

" Nothing particular occurred for some months. 
The servant, Joana, was very useful in the house, 
and both master and mistress congratulated them- 
selves on having engaged a c chamorra ' to work. 
However, we, her fellow- servants, did not much like 
her. She was very sharp in her speech ; and when- 
ever she was angry, her eyes, which were long and 
narrow in shape, seemed almost to emit fire and 
gave her a terribly savage aspect. However, when 
not out of temper, she was a handsome girl. She 
seldom spoke much, but she very soon got into the 
confidence of her master and mistress, and one day, 
when the latter mentioned to her what had been told 
her by the old woman, she said — 

" ' Ah, yes ! I have known it a long time, but I 
was afraid to tell you. Children with that mark grow 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 33 

into lobis-homems before they get to be sixteen, unless 
something is done to stop it/ 

" c And what can be done ? ' said my mistress. 

" e You must cover the evil mark with the blood 
of a white pigeon, strip the child naked, and lay it 
on a blanket on the mountain side the very first time 
the moon rises in the heavens after midnight. Then 
the moon will draw the mark up through the blood, 
just as she draws the waters of the sea up at full 
tide, and the child will be saved.' 

11 The farmer and his wife agreed to do this, to 
save their child from becoming a lobis-homem, and 
it happening to be a new moon late in the night, a 
day or two afterwards, the needful preparations were 
made, and when the night came the child was laid 
out on the mountain side near the house, while the 
moon was still below the horizon. This done, we 
all returned to the house, for it was essential that 
no eye should be upon the child until the moon had 
risen. The farmer began to be uneasy, thinking 
that there might be wolves near, but the men reas- 
sured him, saying that a wolf had not been seen in 
the neighbourhood for many years. Nevertheless, 
he loaded his gun, putting into it, for want of other 
ammunition, five or six rusty nails. 

" He had hardly done so when, to our horror, we 

heard the most piercing screams from where the 

child was lying. In an instant we had all rushed 

3 



34 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

out — the screams increasing as we n eared the spot. 
At this very instant the moon rose, and we saw a 
huge brown wolf standing over the body of the child, 
his fangs bloody and his eyes looking like fire. Seeing 
us come up he slunk off, but the farmer fired at him 
before he could reach the wood close by, and he fell 
and rolled over. I ran up to finish him with the 
heavy stick which I had in my hand, but I could 
only give him one stroke before he rose to his feet 
and made off. The blow was a heavy one, and struck 
him on the foreleg, and he went off into the wood, 
howling and limping. 

" We found the poor child quite dead ; its throat 
was frightfully torn by the wolf's teeth, and the 
blanket was soaked with blood. 

" Now, it was noticed almost immediately that 
the girl, Joana, had not been seen since the child had 
been put out, nor was she in the house when we got 
back. Then for the first time did the truth flash 
upon us — the woman had been an accursed lobis- 
homem, and had murdered the child, and in wound- 
ing the wolf we had in truth wounded the girl who 
had assumed his form. The next morning we fol- 
lowed the traces of the wounded wolf, and, inside 
the wood, not ten paces from where he had been 
seen to enter it, we found Joana lying on the ground 
covered with blood. She immediately began to ex- 
plain to us that she had crept into the wood when 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 35 

we had left the child, fearing that some mischief 
might happen to him ; that she had heard screams 
and had run towards the child in the darkness ; that 
just as she was getting to the outside of the wood 
the moon rose, she saw us coming, saw the wolf run 
towards her, heard the gun fired, immediately felt 
herself to be wounded in the side, and fell to the 
ground, where she had lain ever since. 

" Of course we knew that these were lies sug- 
gested by the devil, so we sent for the priest, but 
before he came she had died. They buried her where 
she lay, and the c wise woman/ who came to look at 
her, said she had the mark of the lobis-homem on her 
breast quite plain, and was evidently a servant of the 
Evil one. The woman said that if she had seen the 
girl's eyes she could have told at once what she was, 
for the lobis-homems all get to have the long, narrow 
eyes and savage look of the wolf. She also explained 
to us that if a lobis-homem can murder and drink the 
blood of a newly-born child, the enchantment ceases, 
and they are lobis-homems no longer." 

" And what did the priest say ?" I asked. 

"He said," replied the farmer, "that we were 
fools to have had anything to do with a woman 
from Tarouca, for it was a nest of witches and war- 
locks." 

" And you are quite sure this girl was a real 
c lobis-homem' ? " 



36 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

" I never doubted it for a moment. Did I not 
see Joana's own eyes in the wolf, as he turned round 
when I struck him ? How can I doubt ? Besides/' 
said the farmer, after a pause, "there was the mark 
of a heavy blow on her right arm — exactly where I 
struck the wolf. She never accounted for that." 

The next morning at daybreak we were all afoot, 
late hours being by no means compatible with the 
economy of a Portuguese farm. A piece of " broa " 
(black bread) and a drink of fresh milk was break- 
fast enough. I asked the farmer to let me accom- 
pany him afield. The farm consisted, as I should 
judge, of not more than twenty-five acres, all in arable 
land, and every inch of it cultivated and cared for 
like a garden. He had five men and three women 
labourers, and he kept five yoke of oxen. The farm 
was divided into many little fields, each of them 
formed terrace-wise on the hill sides, and bounded 
either by a streamlet or by a row of vine plants, 
borne aloft on stout trellis-work, or trailing up the 
limbs of low-growing oak or chestnut trees. Here 
and there a dozen olive trees formed a little grove, 
or a spreading, oak-like cork tree stood at the corner 
of a field. 

There was plenty for the farmer to see to. Some 
of the men were set to turn the water on to the fields, 
and guide it with their hoes over the roots of the 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 37 

growing maize-crop ; others to hoe up the earth be- 
tween the young plants. The women cut grass for 
the cattle with quaint little reaping-hooks ; a pair 
of oxen was yoked to the cart, and went to the hill 
side to cut gorse for the stabling of the cattle. 
A prettier rustic scene never was — with the rich 
green of the crops, the abundant shade of the trail- 
ing vines, and the drip and murmur of the trickling 
waters, joined to the chorus of singing birds. A 
man might have fancied himself carried back eighteen 
hundred years, and transported to that famous farm 
among the Sabine hills. Barring the maize, I fancy 
Horace would have seen nothing outlandish on this 
Portuguese farm. The ploughs, the ox-carts, the 
sickles, the pruning-hooks, are of the ancient Latin 
patterns ; and all the operations of farming abso- 
lutely the same. 

The farmer told me that the land was his own, 
and had been his father's and grandfather's ; being 
afforado, or held as a copyhold estate, on payment 
of a trifling rent of one or two shillings to a nominal 
landlord. But so absolutely was the land his own, 
he told me, that even if he were to fail to pay the 
rent for several years, the landlord would not be en- 
titled to re-enter, but only to sue him for debt ; so 
that, as tenant or holder, he is, to all intents and 
purposes, the actual proprietor of the estate. 

This is the tenure by which a great deal of the 



38 TRAVELS IN TOETVGAL. 

land of North Portugal is held. It is, of course, 
riot conducive to high farming ; hut it results in this, 
that the length and breadth of the land is cultivated 
like a market-garden. The extreme sub-division of 
land which takes place in France, where there is also 
peasant proprietorship, and which is so incompatible 
with good farming, is obviated here by the fact that, 
on the death of the holder of the estate, it is not 
divided among the children, but devolves upon 
one of them only, at the father's option. The 
legatee has then to pay his brothers and sisters 
their portions of the estate, which are fixed by 
law. 

This system has created, in the Northern Pro- 
vinces of the kingdom, a population of hardy, inde- 
pendent, contented yeomen. There are no great 
territorial possessions, no accumulation of agricul- 
tural wealth in one man's hands ; but then, again, 
there is no pauperism. If we cross into some of the 
Southern Provinces, we find, however, the reverse 
of this picture of prosperity and content — great- 
estates ill-farmed, rich absentee landlords, and 
crowds of ill-looking, poverty-stricken, and woe- 
begone day-labourers. 

It was in riding along with my host towards 
Yianna that he gave me the particulars of the tenure 
of his estate. 

The day being hot, and our ride a long one, we 



TRAVELS m PORTUGAL. 39 

got down at a wine-house, and had a delicious drink 
of country wine. 

If it had not been for an accident, I should have 
missed seeing a curious sight. I had been talking 
to the farmer of the number of castles along the sea- 
shore, and he maintained that they were built to 
protect the Portuguese littoral from the attacks of 
the Spaniards. 

This, in point of fact, is not the case ; but, of 
course, I did not dispute the assertion. 

The landlord of the wine-shop confirmed the 
farmer's opinion, and added, in corroboration of it, 
that there was a building of stone, some little way 
inland, which was expressly made to light a beacon 
fire upon, whenever the Spaniards came in sight. 
As it was not half-an-hour's walk, I immediately got 
a boy to guide me, and started for the place, after 
having taken a thankful leave of the hospitable 
farmer. 

To my great surprise I found a very perfect 
specimen of a Cromlech, or so-called Druidical altar ; 
a number of flat stones, set in a semicircle open to 
the west, and covered at top by either one or two 
(I forget which) huge slabs of stone. It was large 
enough to hold twenty or thirty men, and high 
enough for a tall man to stand upright in. 

It could clearly never have served for a beacon 
or a watch station, situated as it is on low-lying 



40 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

land with hills rising north and south of it, and 
commanding therefore only a glimpse of the sea, 
and it would itself be visible from only a small 
extent of country. 

The Cromlech stands in the centre of a wood, 
and I was therefore unable to see whether there 
were any tumuli near at hand. These remains, from 
their size and general appearance, are unquestionably 
such as we commonly call Druidical. Such remains 
have been found in Northern Spain, but I have never 
yet seen any record of their existence in Portugal ; 
nor, in my travels in the country, have I ever come 
across another instance of such a stone monument. 

For the benefit of any future traveller, I will add 
that the Cromlech lies about a quarter of a mile north- 
east of the bridge at Ancora, which again is about 
ten or twelve miles north of the town of Vianna ; 
and, unless I have forgotten, the boy who showed 
me to it, said it was known in the neighbourhood as 
" A Casa do Diabo " — the Devil's house. 

Travelling on southwards we soon came to a 
range of steep mountains, running parallel to the 
coast line, between which and the hills passes the 
high road. On either side of the road are fields of 
great fertility. The whole conformation of the land 
has a general resemblance to the UnderclifF in the 
Isle of "Wight ; but what is most singular about the 
district is, that its population seems to be chiefly 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 41 

composed of women, and, let it be remarked, of 
remarkably handsome, smartly-dressed women. The 
explanation is that the male owners of nearly all 
the pretty little tree- shaded cottages on the hill 
side are artisans, who, enjoying the monopoly in 
Portugal of the trade in stucco-working, spread 
themselves over the whole kingdom and earn very 
high wages, but are only very seldom able to sit 
down by their own hearthstones. 

Now the uncharitable reader may expect that the 
ladies of this community, in the continued absence of 
their natural guardians, would to some degree not re- 
semble their neighbours across the Minho, whom Lord 
Carnarvon in somewhat pompous phrase styles " the 
virtuous but unbenevolent Gralicians." This, I am 
glad to report, is not the case. Their good looks 
and smart appearance co-exist with the best of cha- 
racters. Indeed, they have earned for themselves, in 
this respect, a somewhat formidable reputation. A 
long time ago, a lady of this district, feeling herself 
to be aggrieved by the addresses of a person, who 
presumably omitted some of the formulas proper to 
such advances, called a meeting of her female friends, 
who proceeded forthwith to execute so complete a 
vengeance upon this unfortunate person, that the 
deed has acquired for the ladies of this district a 
sobriquet which commemorates at once their virtue 
and the nature of their revenge. 



42 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

My Galician guide, who had beguiled the way 
with this anecdote in illustration of the morality of 
the neighbourhood, now plainly gave it to bo under- 
stood that, having eaten nothing since five o'clock 
in the morning, he was both hungry and thirsty. 
Agreeing with him on both points, I proposed that 
we should stop at the first inn. Presently we came 
to a hamlet a little off the road, but the only house 
not a private one was a barber's, a circumstance 
which roused a little indignation and some mirth on 
the part of the horse-dealer. 

" What can they want with barbers here," he 
said, " where only every tenth face wears a beard ?" 

Perhaps business was slack on this account, for 
the barber did not hesitate to deal in a jug of wine 
and a loaf of bread. Then we went on, refreshed. 

The trade of a barber is a thriving one all over 
the Peninsula. If a village has three houses, one, 
be sure, is a barber's. The sign is a basin ; some- 
times, as theatre people say, " practicable," and 
dangling from a chain over the door; sometimes, 
painted in vermilion on the whitewashed wall. 

The Portuguese, like the Spaniard, is never full 
dressed unless he is well shaved, and, unlike the 
celebrated De Cosse, Duke of Brissac, he never 
shaves himself;, and, in truth, I would not under- 
take to say, that the admirable motive which drove 
the aforesaid peer to this daily task would, under any 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 43 

circumstances of high rank or idleness, have similar 
sway with the lazy Peninsular. " Timoleon do 
Cosse," the French noble was often heard to solilo- 
quize of a morning, with the open razor in his hand : 
" God has made thee a gentleman, and the King has 
made thee a duke. It is, nevertheless, right and fit 
that thou shouldst have something to do ; therefore 
thou shalt shave thyself." A conclusion which, from 
similar premises, would never be arrived at in the 
Peninsula, where the ruling axiom is — Never to do 
for oneself what others can do for one. 



CHAPTER III. 

Vianna — Costume and Looks of the Women — Cheerfulness of the 
People — Their Dances ; their Improvised Singing — River Lima — 
Unsupported Tradition — Funeral Customs — Surrounding Scenery 
Overpraised — Raptures over Scenery make Poor Reading — Home 
of Miranda, the Poet — Reflections on Ill-directed Travel, suggested 
by Misadventures of Two British Tourists — Abundant Traces of 
the Moors — Wrong Construction put upon the Author's Motives— 
Relief in "Ridden Treasure — Stories in Proof — Precious Stones in 
Portugal — The Crown Jewels ; the Rraganza Diamond. 

I left Vianna, an uninteresting town, passing 
over the curious bridge, said to be a mile and a 
quarter in length, which crosses the broad estuary 
formed by the river Lima. It was my first inten- 
tion to keep the high road to Oporto; but this 
road looked so uninviting that after travelling along 
it some ten miles, till I reached a range of bare 
hills whence I could still look back upon the town 
of Vianna, and seeing in front of me a country that 
did not promise to be more interesting, I turned 
north-eastwards, towards Ponte de Lima, which 
lies on the same river as Vianna, about ten or fifteen 
miles above it, and I was rewarded by coming 
upon a very rich and picturesque country. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 45 

It was a " festa," — a holiday — and the pea- 
santry were all in their holiday dresses; the 
women very gaily attired, with embroidered muslin 
kerchiefs on their heads, over which is worn the 
heavy, black Spanish-looking hat, with ornaments 
of floss silk made to curl and to look like a black 
ostrich feather. The costume of the women varies 
slightly in almost every parish of the kingdom ; but 
it generally consists of an ample serge petticoat, 
descending to the ankle, and gathered round the 
waist into innumerable pleats, a close-fitting bodice 
(either black or gaily- coloured) over a linen shirt 
showing white on the shoulders and the arms, with 
a bright- coloured kerchief, commonly red, or orange, 
or blue, crossed over the breast. All this makes a 
picturesque costume which well suits the comely, 
buxom, black-haired peasant women of the Minho 
Province, with their rich olive complexions and fine 
eyes. The women have retained their national 
dress, and in the remoter parts, the men also ; but 
in many places the latter are less conservative, and 
wear wide-awake hats, trousers, and short jackets, 
in lieu of the old national costume. 

The women use their peculiar peasant jewellery 
of ancient Moorish design, on feast days only. 
Heavy necklaces of complicated pattern suspend 
huge, heart-shaped lockets on their breasts ; in their 
ears are heavy pendent earrings. One woman will 



46 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

often wear three or four such, necklaces of gold, of 
a standard of not less than twenty carats ; and I 
have been assured that many of the peasant women 
carry about them not less than twenty or thirty 
pounds worth of gold ornaments. 

Coming from Galicia, where the natives are 
so exceedingly boorish, I was much struck . by the 
kindly, cheerful manners of the people. In every 
little hamlet by the road side — and the frequency of 
such hamlets and the density of the population 
are marvellous — in every village I passed to-day, 
there was a gathering of the inhabitants : the men 
busy with a game of bowls, the youths and girls 
dancing, with a crowd of lookers-on ; the twanging 
of guitars mingling pleasantly with the sound of 
laughter and cheerful voices. 

Up among the mountains, some kind of 
"Bolero" is danced, that is, a "pas de deux" 
between a male and female dancer ; but in this part 
of the country, I have seen only one kind of dance, 
certainly a very singular one. Each person dances 
by himself or herself, to a slow and monotonous jig 
tune, following the person in front in a circle. The 
music often accompanies — in the most literal sense 
— the dancers : it is generally a fiddle, and an 
amusing sight it is to see the man who plays it 
fiddling gravely away as he cuts the queer little 
steps of the dance. There are usually one or 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 47 

two guitar players among the spectators, who 
join the fiddle and make up an orchestra. 
These monotonous dances will last for hours, the 
tired dancers falling out and fresh ones taking 
their places. 

Often on a holiday evening, the villagers 
assemble to listen to extemporary singing; one 
lad will challenge another lad or maiden to sing 
against him in alternate rhymed verse; or a 
champion will saunter up, with his guitar, from a 
neighbouring village, and throw down the gauntlet 
to a whole hamlet. This is called singing ao desafio, 
singing to a challenge. There is, of course, as in 
Italian extemporary recitation, some trust to the 
performer's memory, and when his invention is 
at fault, he may often interpolate some stock 
rhyme; but as the Portuguese improvisor has to 
find a rhyme to his opponent's verse, there must 
be far less dependence on memory, and more on 
quickness of fancy, than in Italy. The rule is, 
as far as I can understand, that the singer who 
begins, goes on plying the other with verses, to 
which the second has to find rhymed answers; 
when he hesitates or stops, the bout is concluded, 
the parts reversed, and the improvisation recom- 
mences. 

It must not be supposed that this feat is quite 
so difficult as it might appear. The verses are half 



18 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

sung, half recited, in a peculiar, slow, drawling tone, 
and plenty of time is given to find a ryhme in a 
language like the Portuguese, which is very full 01 
them. Moreover, practice makes perfect, and this 
alternate verse singing is to be heard all day among 
the fields and hill sides of the Minho. The shep- 
herd lad, keeping his flock on the hill, will serenade 
his friend across the valley, perhaps a quarter of a 
mile away. A girl cutting grass will shout out her 
remarks to her lover, two fields from her, and these 
two will go on singing to each other the live-long 
day, like cicadas in the sunshine. I have heard a 
man, when no companion was at hand, actually 
whistle each second verse in a higher key, to re- 
present, I presume, the sweet strains of some absent 
mistress. 

This alternate song is not common except in the 
Northern Province of the Minho ; the most populous, 
the most fertile, and the most beautiful province of 
the kingdom. In the mountainous district of Beira, 
the singing is of quite a different character ; and in 
the poverty- stricken provinces of the south, there is 
neither singing nor cause for singing. 

I am not disposed to construct a theory to 
account for this most curious custom ; but a man 
given to theorize might easily build up a very 
plausible one. It is difficult to convey an accurate 
impression of the actual song, so utterly unlike any 



TRAVELS IN POliTUGAL. 49 

kind of vocal music in use among civilized or un- 
civilized men. The tone is a peculiar nasal drawl, 
audible very far off, and, it must be admitted, very 
much improved by distance. The verse is metrical 
in a high degree, and often takes the form of a rough 
hexameter. Considerable licence is allowed in the 
number of feet, but I have heard ten or twenty con- 
secutive lines which were as perfect hexameters as 
Virgil ever wrote. "Whatever licence is taken, a 
dactyl and spondee invariably terminate the line. 
Its original character was, I have no doubt, that of 
a love song — one verse being chanted in a bass voice, 
and the answering line coming in a higher key ; even 
if two men or two women sing together, this diffe- 
rence of key is maintained ; but it is as often, or 
oftener, used for satirical purposes. The harvest 
and the vintage are the times when the song can be 
studied to most advantage, and then it is to be heard 
in its full luxuriance and, it must be added, in its full 
licentiousness. 

It has often occurred to me, that the origin of this 
Amcebsean song may be sought for among the Italian 
nations which colonized Portugal. Looking to the 
tenacity with which, as I have shown, the Minhotes 
have kept to the old rules of husbandry of their 
Eoman masters, to some of the old Italian myths, 
and to the Latin tongue, might it not be that they 
retained as well, in this ancient form of song, 



50 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

another vestige of their first civilizers ? To those 
who have heard the Minhote peasant chanting (for 
it is a chant, rather than a song) "with eager 
thought his Doric lay," it is not difficult to believe 
that its origin dates from a remote antiquity. May 
it not be lineally derived, and (except for the addition 
of verse borrowed from the Moors, the monks, or 
the troubadours) be almost identical with the rude 
Fescennine verses which Horace says were sung in 
his day, by the country people at harvest time ? I 
propound this not as an opinion, but as a suggestion. 
The River Lima passes Ponte cle Lima in a rapid 
stream. There is a tradition that the Roman 
colonists named it Lethe, the River of Oblivion. I 
know no solid reason for supposing that this was so ; 
but the old Portuguese poet, Diogo Bernardes, men- 
tions it, and the untrustworthy historian Florus 
asserts that the Roman troops on reaching its 
banks, hesitated to cross a river with so ill- 
omened a name, until their general had set them an 
example, by plunging into the stream with the stan- 
dard in his hand.* It any Portuguese river was- 

* The editor, or rather compiler, of Murray's " Handbook for 
Portugal," relates this fable as an actual historical fact, citing as 
his authority, " The Historian," so that the unwary reader might 
suppose that Livy or Suetonius was responsible for it. The hero is 
also made to be Lucius Junius Brutus — the avenger of Lucretia 
and expeller of the Tarquins — who, of course, if he lived at all did so 
several centuries before any Roman soldier set foot in the Peninsula. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 51 

ever known as Lethe, it was, I suspect, the little 
Eiver Leca, near Oporto ; but the whole story is 
almost certainly a myth. 

Ponte cle Lima is a plain-looking town, with a 
broad Praca, or square, in the centre. It contains 
about three thousand inhabitants, of whom appa- 
rently two-thirds were in temporary mourning for a 
much respected resident, whose funeral had taken 
place a day or two before. The . house of the 
deceased gentleman was besieged by a crowd of 
sympathetic friends, who not only thronged the stairs 
and passages, but had formed themselves outside, 
six or seven deep, to wait their turn for admittance. 

It is customary throughout Portugal, on the 
occurrence of a death, for the friends of the deceased 
person to pay visits of condolence to the relations 

The fact is that the editor has " cribbed " the story from a foolish 
Portuguese compilation, and copied the blunder as well as the story. 
Murray's " Handbook for Portugal " is not only the worst hand- 
book in that eminent publisher's series — for that might still be high 
praise — but probably the very worst handbook that ever was printed. 
The compiler would seem to be possessed of strong reactionary 
opinions, both in politics and religion. He sympathises with the 
miserable cause of Dom Miguel, and deplores the suppression of the 
convents. All that has hindered Portugal on the road to progress, 
all that would make arbitrary government possible, helped on by 
priestcraft and ignorance, finds favour in his eyes. This gentleman 
would seem to be on an intellectual level with a certain Mr. Smith, 
a reverend tourist who has recently written a book on Portugal, and 
who, while mildly disapproving of the Inquisition, highly commends 
the uniformity and absence of all Dissent consequent upon the 
former activity of the Holy Office ! 



52 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

two or three days afterwards. The bereaved rela- 
tives sit in a half- darkened room, and receive all 
those acquaintances who may think fit to pay 
this token of respect. The more distant friends, 
entering the room with grave and gloomy counte- 
nances, bow or curtsey to each of the relations 
present, with all the expression of sympathy they 
can command, sidle off towards the doorway, and 
" exeunt bowing." It is to be observed that in 
the upper and middle classes, this ceremony is 
performed by men in black tail-coats, white ties, 
and white gloves ; and by ladies in black silk 
dresses, with more, less, or no crape, according to 
circumstances. While the more distant acquaint- 
ances are let off thus easily, the nearer friends of 
the family have to sit about the room, all lugu- 
briously dressed in the deepest mourning, none of 
them venturing to speak above a whisper ; and as 
each new arrival enters, a little chorus of sighs 
and groans is heard. This mournful ceremony is 
often repeated during three or four days. In the 
case of a widow, particularly a young widow, she is 
required to " renew her grief" to all her acquaint- 
ances for weeks after her loss ; and this mild form 
of suttee is sometimes known seriously to affect the 
health of an unfortunate woman, already broken, 
perhaps, by a long course of sick-bed nursiDg and 
watching. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 53 

The different funeral observances of different 
nations are surely very singular. The Chinese, 
when their relations die, dress themselves in bright 
yellow ; the bereaved of another nation shave their 
heads ; in another, they cut and slash their bodies ; 
we ourselves, when we mourn, let down white window- 
blinds for a week ; but I think this custom of the 
Portuguese, of allowing themselves to be bowed to 
and sighed at, is the least rational of all ways of 
showing grief and respect for the dead. 

The country about here has been praised by all 
travellers, as being beautiful above everything else 
to be seen in Portugal. Lord Carnarvon says of 
the banks of the Lima that he had never gazed on 
lovelier scenes. Beautiful as it unquestionably is, 
I should not be inclined to set it above much 
scenery of the same kind in the Minho ; and after 
hearing so much of Ponte de Lima, I was, in truth, 
inclined to find the neighbourhood rather tame than 
otherwise. 

The fact is, that travellers do wrong to go into 
raptures over a particular scene, seeing that so very 
much depends upon the light and shade, the time 
of day and of year, the discernment of the indi- 
vidual, and the popular notions about scenery pre- 
valent at the time. At the present day, persons of 
the most approved taste seem to be in favour of 



54 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

rugged foregrounds ; for the middle distance, a 
jumble of craggy rocks, well coloured with lichens 
and mosses ; and for the far distance, a Turneresque 
effect of mist, caught in the tops and clefts of far- 
off mountains. Some time ago, critics of scenery 
of the very highest judgment thought mountains 
barbarous and "horrid," and set no store on a 
scene without a picturesque ruin, a river, a lake, 
a dance of maidens and, of course, the inevitable 
dark-brown tree in the foreground. Further back, 
again, the artistic and poetic instincts combined 
into an aesthetic appreciation of what was perfectly 
regular and smooth. The poet Marvel, wishing to 
describe a beautiful scene, shows how the land was 
shaped into a perfect hemisphere. "The stiffest 
compass,' ' he says — 

" could not strike 
A line more circular or like." 

Now, I maintain that, seeing how general 
opinion on such matters varies from day to clay, 
travellers should be cautious how they praise any 
scenery at all. No author is bound to be wiser or 
more consistent than his readers. Rhapsodies over 
scenery make the worst " padding," and a traveller 
is sure to provoke criticism from the majority of his 
readers, if he indulges in anything but the very 
mildest eclecticism on the subject. I therefore 
limit myself to observing of this highly extolled 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 55 

district, that what seems to me chiefly worthy of 
attention about it, is the contrast of bold, rocky hill 
with valleys teeming with vegetation of a luxuriance 
•of growth which can be seen hardly anywhere else 
in Europe. 

The neighbourhood of Ponte de Lima is classic 
ground to the student of Portuguese literature. 
Not far from the town is the Quinta de Tapada, the 
country-house of the great poet, Sa de Miranda, 
who holds the second place among the poets of 
Portugal, even if he does not deserve to rank with 
Camoens himself. Miranda was the father of Por- 
tuguese poetry, and was hardly less distinguished 
as a traveller, an accomplished courtier, a philo- 
sopher and a patriot, than as a poet ; and yet his 
fame in Portugal is almost nothing. A man whose 
name, if he had lived in any other country, would 
never be allowed to die on the lips of his admirers, 
is all but forgotten in the land of his birth. His 
works are ill-edited, and ill-printed, his life un- 
written ; and no other monument of the great poet 
exists among his countrymen than a cold acknow- 
ledgment of his excellence. 

For what inscrutable reasons do men — chiefly our 
own countrymen and Americans — visit countries of 
whose language they know no syllable ? Not con- 
tenting themselves, even, with keeping upon the 
beaten tourist tract, where French and English will 



56 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

serve them, but plunging recklessly into by-paths, 
where they are utterly unintelligible, and where the 
unsophisticated inhabitants regard them, not without 
reason, as beings of perverse mind and crass stu- 
pidity ; for it takes some grasp of intellect to look 
upon a foreigner who speaks one's own language im- 
perfectly as anything but an idiot. Travellers of this 
idle, ignorant and ridiculous class, bring great dis- 
paragement upon all our race, and, as I fully believe, 
do more to lower our national prestige, than the re- 
spectful contemplation by foreigners of all the accu- 
mulated wisdom of our Ambassadors, Ministers, and 
Consuls does to elevate it. 

A man's home must be very desolate, a man's 
mind very barren, or his love for solitude very great,, 
if he wilfully puts himself into that most complete 
of all solitudes, a foreign crowd, whose language is 
unknown to him. It is like a man going to a con- 
cert with his ears stopped, or to a picture-gallery and 
blinded. What can a man gain in return for the 
fatigues and troubles of travel, if he is never to per- 
ceive more than the outside of things, if he is never 
to be able to ask a question or understand an answer, 
never to get at the inner life of the people ? What 
avails him painfully to cultivate the tenth muse, the 
Muse of Travel, with " wisdom at one entrance quite 
shut out ? " 

These reflections and this mild indignation were 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 57 

called forth by the presence of two English tourists, 
who had come to Ponte de Lima by carriage from 
Oporto, and who wished to be taken down the river 
to Yianna in a boat. An altercation, pitiful to be- 
hold, was going on between them and their driver ; 
neither party understanding a syllable spoken by the 
other. The Englishmen were condemning — I might 
use a shorter word — the stupidity of the natives, 
while they overlooked their own. Both sides got 
more and more puzzled, angry, and red in the face. 
The crowd laughed. The driver turned round to 
the natives, and made his view of the question quite 
clear to them. The Englishmen, speaking in their 
own tongue, put their meaning equally plainly to each 
other. It was a melancholy exhibition. After look- 
ing on for a little time, I intervened and made things 
straight ; with the feelings of a man who has seen a 
fly fall into the cream-jug, and, for a time, thinks him 
well served for his greediness, then pities his strug- 
gles and helps him out, watching him crawl ridicu- 
lously away with clogged wings and legs ; so did I 
help out these two foolish tourists, and watched 
them for a while crawling as it were on their way, 
laughed at, ashamed, contemptible. 

Throughout my ride to Ponte de Lima it had been 
striking me how many traces of the Moors were still 
to be observed in the rural parts of Portugal. To 
any one who has been in Eastern countries, the im- 



£8 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

press of Orientalism in many of the customs and 
habits of the people of Portugal is very perceptible. 
A hundred little circumstances in daily life, insig- 
nificant in themselves, are constantly reminding the 
traveller how much the people around him must have 
learnt from the singular race who were their masters 
for so many centuries, and with what curious tenacity 
these lessons have been retained. 

The '- Socco " or wooden-soled slipper, worn by 
both men and women — by women only on gala days 
— is precisely the foot covering to be seen in the 
bazaars of Cairo or Damascus ; and the Portuguese 
will shuffle off these slippers, in token of respect, as 
they enter a house or a church, just as an Oriental 
will leave his at the entrance of his mosque. 

If the gold ornaments which I have mentioned 
as being worn by the women, are closely examined, 
their admirable form and pattern will be found to be 
of pure Arab type and origin. The crescent and the 
circle are the prevailing " motives " of the work, 
combined and intertwined with all the elaborate 
intricacy of Eastern artifice. The patterns never 
change ; and the ornaments are repaired, but never 
re-cast. The, parish priest, at a place near Barcellos, 
assured me that the ornaments which covered a Ma- 
donna in his church dated from the time of the 
Moors. They had every appearance of great anti- 
quity, even if they were not quite so old as the priest 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 59 

believed ; nevertheless, except that the work was a 
little more delicate than that of the present day, 
these ornaments were identical in design with those 
now worn. 

Although the jewellery is delicately worked, yet 
considering the absolute indestructibility of gold, 
except by actual violence, and considering also the 
rare occasions on which they were worn, I see no 
improbability in some of the ornaments worn by the 
Portuguese women at this day, having been actually 
the work of Moslem artificers. 

Another instance of the prevalence and endur- 
ing character of Moorish art-forms is found in the 
"cangas," or yokes of the oxen. While the ox- cart 
itself is purely Roman in shape and appearance, 
without having undergone the smallest change in its 
construction during fourteen centuries, the yoke is 
Oriental. It is, in shape, a single board set edge- 
wise upon the necks of the oxen, and is ornamented 
on each face, sometimes profusely and very beauti- 
fully, with characteristic Moorish incised designs. 

The common earthenware vessels, the cooking 
pots and water-jars, might many of them have been 
turned on a potter's wheel in Morocco or Algiers ; 
so, likewise, the whole economy of the kitchen, in 
peasant households, is conducted on simple Eastern 
principles. 

I amused myself to day by watching, from the 



60 TRAVELS IN rORTUGAL. 

commencement, the preparation of a stew. Having 
arrived, at about three o'clock, at a solitary wayside 
inn, the sun being overpoweringly hot and the air 
sultry, I rode my horse through the inn- door, and 
tied him up in a cool and lofty stable communicating 
with the kitchen. No one was about, and I walked 
into the kitchen. It was a room with a mud floor, 
raised one step higher than the stable, and divided 
from it only by a wooden partition. The sleeping- 
room was again separated from the kitchen by 
another slight partition, so that the construction of 
the house was simple, consisting of an oblong square 
building, having a kitchen in the centre, with a stable 
on one side of it and a bed-room on the other. 

Having surveyed the establishment at my leisure, 
and, perceiving that its inhabitants were taking ad- 
vantage of the holiday to indulge in a siesta, I woke 
them up, and asked for something to eat and drink ; 
then, sitting down on a stool, I watched the pre- 
paration of my meal. First, a fire was kindled upon 
the hearthstone, which consisted simply of a huge 
slab of stone in the middle of the room. Looking up 
to see what was going to become of the smoke, I 
saw that more or less of it was finding its way into 
a peculiar wooden contrivance, like an immense 
square extinguisher, suspended from the ceiling at a 
height of about two feet above our heads, and pass- 
ing through the roof. In the meantime, a levee en 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 61 

masse of the family was pursuing a solitary chicken 
that I had seen outside, and, before the fire was well 
lighted, he had found his way into an earthenware 
pot, with a little water, a piece of bacon, a little 
rice, beans, bread, and about five or six other in- 
gredients. I have watched the making of these 
stews often since, and I believe the only secret is to 
put in some of everything eatable in the house. 
The result is always successful. 

Now, all this that I have described is purely 
Eastern. The flat stone for a fireplace, the wooden 
chimney, the covered earthenware cooking-pot, with 
the hot cinders raked up round ifc, even to the 
variously compounded stew, have all their prototypes 
in the tents of the Bedouin or the dwellings of semi- 
Arab tribes on the northern shores of Africa ; and if 
one were to address the old woman watching the 
simmering pot, like a witch her cauldron, and ex- 
press a hope that her cooking might turn out well, 
ten to one but that she would reply, " Oxala, meu 
amo," — " Pray Heaven it may, my master ! " 
Oxald, being a pure Moslem adjuration, meaning, 
" Would to Allah ! " quite unsuspectingly employed 
by orthodox Portuguese Christians. 

The traces of Arabic in the Portuguese language 
are by no means so many as might have been 
expected. So far as I can ascertain, the Arabic 
words in Portuguese amount to about two hundred 



62 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

in number ; but they are, for the most part, words 
in very common use by the lowest as well as by 
other classes, and two hundred words form a large 
proportion of the whole vocabulary of an illiterate 
peasant. The civilization superimposed by their 
Moorish invaders upon a people already educated to 
some extent by the Romans, is clearly evidenced by 
the character of the words which are taken from 
the Arabic. What the people already knew they 
retained the old names for. New ideas and new 
things they expressed in the language of the race 
which introduced them. If we had no other 
evidence than that of language, we might have 
gathered that it was the Moors who extended and 
improved the art of healing, and taught the use of 
many medicinal herbs and chemical substances ; 
who invented a new system of numeration ; who 
developed commerce and established customs' dues ; 
who taught the use of the Eastern water-wheel; who 
first showed how water could be made to flow up- 
wards in jets and fountains ; who taught the art of 
glazing pottery, and how to fabricate decorative 
tiles ; and who first made known the ingenious arts 
of sugar-making and distilling spirit. Record of all 
these inventions and discoveries exists in such 
Arabic words as — " Almofariz," a chemist's mortar; 
"Alfazema," lavender; " Alzebre," aloes; " Alga- 
rismo," a numeral ; " Alfandega," a custom-house; 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 63 

"Nora," a water-wheel ; "Chafariz," a fountain; 
"Azulejo," a glazed tile; "Alcatruz" a drain- 
pipe ; " Azucar," sugar ; " Alembico," a still ; 
and "Alcool," spirit. 

Of all marks of the former ascendency of the 
Moors, the most striking to a foreigner is to be 
found in the manners of the people themselves. 
The contrast in this respect is very strong between 
the northern races of the Peninsula, where there was 
little or no contact with the Arabs, as in the case 
of the Galicians, the Asturians, the Biscayans, and 
the Catalonians ; and those where that contact was 
long continued and intimate, as in Portugal, Murcia, 
Valencia, and Andalusia. The ceremonious cour- 
tesy observable among these latter races is unques- 
tionably due to the bygone influences of the Moors 
and Arabs, races of men who derive their institu- 
tions, their religions, and some, in many cases most 
of their blood, from the most courteous and high- 
bred nation that the world has ever seen — a spirited 
and accomplished people, who, in their wars with 
the Christians, set" the example of that generosity 
and courtesy which grew into our Christian chivalry. 

The extreme importance of good breeding, and 
what may be called educated manners, has always 
been inculcated by the Moslem as part of their 
religion, and is apparent enough to anyone who has 
had opportunities of observing the daily life, either 



Qi TRAVELS IN P011TUGAL. 

of the Arabs themselves, or of peoples brought 
strongly under the influence of their religious and 
social customs. Very rough manners probably pre- 
vailed among the mediseval Portuguese and Casti- 
lians, and a Moorish farmer of the twelfth century 
in Andalusia or Algarve would probably have had 
nothing to learn in propriety of demeanour — 
possibly much to impart — at the Christian Courts 
of Toledo or Guimaraens. This good influence of 
the Moors continues to this day, and in Portugal it 
is very apparent. Nowhere in the Peninsula, not 
even in Andalusia, where the vestiges of the Moors 
are supposed to be stronger than elsewhere, have I 
found such an observance of the old ceremonious 
habits of speech as in Portugal. To say of a Por- 
tuguese that he is mat creado — ill brought up, ill- 
bred — is still the greatest of reproaches. The 
exceptions to this universal good breeding are to be 
seen among the lower middle classes, with whom 
liberal ideas are happily become common, but who 
appear to think, with liberals elsewhere, that dis- 
courtesy is equivalent to an assertion of equality. 
It has frequently been noticed that, in Portugal, the 
best manners are to be found in the very highest 
and the very lowest classes. The middle classes, 
as a rule, however, sin rather from an excess than 
from a want of manners ; they are, like some vulgar 
people at home, far too anxious to show that they 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 65 

know how to behave. They are too ceremonious to 
be perfectly courteous. 

That such lasting effects should have resulted 
from collision between the two races, and that the 
Christians should have preserved their religion, and 
much of their liberty, under the sway of their 
Moslem conquerors, are circumstances which should 
have seemed utterly unaccountable, according to 
the theories of those who have written the history 
of Mahometan rule in the Peninsula with the pre- 
conceived notion' that the Moslem invader invariably 
offered to the conqueror the alternative of the sword 
or the Koran ; the fact being that the cruelty, in- 
tolerance, rapine, and injustice ascribed to the 
Saracens are, to a great extent, the fables of 
monkish chroniclers. Incompatible as these alle- 
gations are with the known respect shown to 
Christian churches — in some cases the mosque and 
the church stood side by side — and with the 
proved prosperity of many Christian cities under 
the rule of Islam, it was not until history, as told 
by the monks, came to be compared with the 
writings of Arabian annalists, that the truth came 
fully out ; and that the government of the Saracens 
was proved to be, on the whole, just, tolerant, 
and even beneficent. Gayangos, in Spain, and the 
historian, Herculano,* in Portugal, are the two 

* I hardly know a greater seryice to letters than would bo 

5 



06 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

men to whom this rectification of history is chiefly 
due. 

Coming back to my inn at Ponte de Lima after a 
walk about the town and near the river, I found the 
public room pretty full of towns-people. A little 
very mild gambling was going on, and a great deal 
of conversation. From the sudden cessation of talk 
as I entered the room and saluted the company, and 
from the curiosity with which I was regarded, I was 
led to gather that I had myself been the subject of 
both conversation and curiosity. That a foreigner 
on horseback should have come among them, and 
that that foreigner should be travelling without a 
servant to allay any of their natural inquisitiveness, 
for I had left my Spanish guide at Yianna, was no 
doubt, doubly puzzling to the citizens. In former 
days, my business would have been thought to be 
political, and as they had reason to know it was not 
commercial, I was probably set down as a person 

accomplished by the translation into English or French of the 
three volnmes of the " History of Portugal," by this most eminent 
of living Portuguese writers. Herculano is perhaps, on the whole, 
the first historian of the present age. His pure style, unequalled in 
Portugal since the days of Barros — the so-called Livy of Portugal — 
is a pleasant contrast to the rhetorical writings of many of his con- 
temporaries. His acumen and judgment in the appreciation of 
authorities, his lucidity, and the art with which he satisfies the 
reader of his learning without importing into his narrative any of 
the dryness of the chroniclers among whom his researches have lain, 
are qualities in a historian which the world has not seen since the 
death of Gibbon. Unfortunately, Herculano's history only reaches 
to the end of the thirteenth century. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 67 

connected with mines ; but as this part of Portugal 
has little mineral wealth, such a supposition was not 
likely to be very strong ; so when I came to enter 
into conversation with these gentlemen, I had evi- 
dence that their minds were by no means made up. 
I knew well that they were far too clever to believe 
me if I had told them the plain truth, namely, that 
I was travelling to see the country and the people ; 
therefore I said nothing. 

In the course of conversation it was mentioned 
that when the French army fled northward, after the 
passage of the Douro and capture of Oporto by Wel- 
lington, the military chest of the French was secretly 
buried, to avoid risk of capture somewhere in this 
neighbourhood. When I remarked that I had not 
before heard of this circumstance, I observed a look 
of incredulity upon the face of my informant ; and I 
have very little doubt that what would appear to 
them as my affected ignorance of a well-known fact, 
taken in conjunction with the French expedition, then 
talked of for the recovery of the lost treasure at Yigo, 
convinced those present that this military chest, and 
nothing else, was the object of my mission ! 

It is hardly to be believed with what childish cre- 
dulity stories of hidden treasure are told and accepted 
in all parts of Portugal. There is more time and 
labour wasted in searching for imaginary concealed 
riches, than would earn real wealth if properly 



68 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

directed, Some small foundation, indeed, for this 
general credulity exists in the hoarding propensities 
necessarily produced in former times of insecurity 
and danger ; and one or two well-attested instances 
of the discovery of hidden treasure have come to my 
own knowledge. An English merchant having occa- 
sion to make some repairs in a house rented by him, 
in or near the town of Regoa, the workmen, either 
in pulling down a wall or in taking up a floor, came 
upon a receptacle containing about two hundred mil- 
reis, in gold and silver coin — about £40 or £50. A 
goldsmith of Viseu told me that the garden- wall of 
a neighbour threatening to fall, it was ordered to be 
pulled down ; and that on one very heavy stone in it 
being removed, an earthen pot was laid bare in a 
little hollow behind where it had stood, and in this 
pot were found no less than seven golden moidores I 
These discoveries were not magnificent ones, and it 
is not likely that the few which now and again are 
made, are more so ; but they serve to keep up the 
prevailing appetite for treasure-seeking. 

There has always prevailed a belief that an im- 
mense treasure was hidden away — I have never heard 
under what circumstances — in the uninhabited royal 
palace of Queluz, near Lisbon ; and ineffectual efforts 
have from time to time, been made to find it. A 
few years ago, great interest was suddenly created 
by the announcement that an old sergeant of artillery 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL, 69 

had sent, on his death-bed, for a high officer of the 
court, and had confided to him that he — the sergeant 
— was the sole survivor of the party which had been 
entrusted with the concealment of the treasure in 
question. He then proceeded to describe accurately 
the situation in which it was to be found. There 
was, as may be imagined, prodigious excitement 
among the lords and ladies of the court ; and on a 
certain day, a large party of them went to the de- 
serted palace. The particular plank designated by 
the sergeant, in the particular room which he men- 
tioned, was found. The workmen brought for the 
purpose forced it up with their tools, and between it 
and the ceiling below was found a space, in which 
there was — nothing at all ! Then more planks were 
pulled up, then the floors of other rooms, then holes 
were made in likely-looking places in the walls ; but 
still no treasure, and the courtly party had to return 
without it : but the palace of Queluz has been left in 
a state the reverse of what is known to lawyers as 
"tenant able repair." 

Another instance of credulity is of so astounding 
a nature that, if I had not heard the account on un- 
exceptional authority, I should not venture to relate 
it. In the city of Oporto, a society or club has been 
formed, for the sole purpose of seeking for the hiding- 
place of a fabulously large diamond, concealed, under 
C know not what circumstances, either in the city or 



70 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

in its near neighbourhood. I am ignorant of the 
rules and regulations of this club — whether the en- 
trance is heavy, the subscription high, or how many 
black balls exclude. I should imagine that the 
search for a single gem, among the streets and 
squares, and suburbs of a large city, must be very 
much like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay ; 
nor do I well see how such a search could be set 
about without exciting comment and suspicion. I 
presume the members perambulate each other's gar- 
dens after nightfall, with dark lanterns. They must, 
of a truth, be men of a solemn and earnest tempera- 
ment if they can meet together and preserve their 
gravity. Perhaps the club is broken up now, and 
for this very reason, and that solvuntitr risu tabidce, 
they could not look each other in the face without 
laughing. 

I am not aware that the belief of the members, 
of the Diamond Club in the hidden stone rests upon 
anything resembling evidence, or upon anything at 
all, except the fact that a great number of fine gems, 
particularly diamonds, do exist in the country. The 
Portuguese obtained many precious stones of great 
value from India during the palmy days of their 
connection with that country ; and more still, chiefly 
diamonds, from their Brazilian dependencies. I 
have seen, at evening parties in Lisbon and Oporto, 
a far greater show of good diamonds than would be? 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL, 71 

seen, on similar occasions, in London or Paris ; the 
stones, indeed, mostly ill-cut and ill-set, but repre- 
senting an immense money value. 

The crown jewels of Portugal are, for so small a 
kingdom, marvellous, and if the huge Braganza dia- 
mond — which is one of them — is a true " brilliant," 
the Portuguese regalia must be quite unequalled. 
The Braganza stone was found in the Caethe Minim 
Mine in Brazil, in 1741, and was frequently worn by 
King John VI. The lowest estimate of the weight 
of this stone is sixteen hundred and eighty carats, 
while the Kohinoor weighs but a hundred and six ; 
the Star of the South a hundred and twenty-five ; 
and the great Orloff diamond a hundred and ninety- 
four carats. The OrlofF is, however, "rose-cut," 
■i.e., not the true " brilliant " shape. The Braganza 
diamond, from its unusual size, has been suspected to 
be nothing more than a fine white Brazilian topaze ; 
but the fact that it has been publicly worn by the 
king, at a court whose frequenters are particularly 
good judges of diamonds, must go some way to 
make us believe it to be what it professes. I have 
never seen it. A person who had the opportunity of 
examining it closely, told me it was as large as a 
hen's egg, and was badly cut, having but few facets. 
My informant had no doubt but that it was a true 
diamond; but an ordinary observer's evidence on 
such a point goes for little. If the stone is uncut, 



72 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

or imperfectly cut, the marvel of its size is lessened, 
but not removed. To cut such a rough stone into 
true " brilliant " shape could only be effected by re- 
ducing its weight to nine hundred or a thousand 
carats. It would, even then, be five times as large 
as the largest diamond in existence. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Visit to tlie Gaviarra — Prudery of Portuguese Writers — Decay of Litera- 
ture — Vievjfrom Top of Gaviarra — Early Portuguese History — Ad- 
vantages of Travelling on Horseback — Ride through the Gerez 
Mountains and along Spanish Frontier — Wild Birds, Beasts and 
Flowers — Fishing and Shooting not Good in Portugal — Hill Forts 
— Legends Connected with One — Mild Eeligious Exercises — Pil- 
grimages to Shrines. 

Leaving Ponte de Lima I rode along a fair road 
to Arcos, intending to examine the Gaviarra — 
the loftiest mountain in Portugal — whose height 
is nearly eight thousand feet. Although I have 
given reasons for avoiding description of scenery, 
it is impossible not to notice the exquisite beauty 
of the whole country hereabouts — a beauty which 
appeals to the eye of the artist, rather than to 
that of the ordinary scenery-hunter : craggy hills, 
with their wealth of lichen growth, of a colour 
beyond the daring of any landscape painter ; valleys 
rich with the luxuriance of a half-tropical vege- 
tation, and richer still in their association with 
the best idyllic poetry of Portugal. It is this very 
country which the poets Miranda and Bernardes de- 



74 TEAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

scribe in their poems; and certainly these green 
dells and stream- watered valleys with their hanging 
vineyards, rich in waving crops of maize, and alive 
with the songs of birds, the peaceful lowing of cattle, 
and the chants of peasant girls and youths, might 
well seem to a poet's fancy to contain all that is de- 
lightful of rustic life. Passing along the narrow 
roads in the early morning, when the sun had just 
risen, and with its slanting rays sparkling on the 
leaves, grass and wild flowers, and drawing up the 
thin vapour from among the clefts and gorges of the 
distant hills, I thought that I had never seen a coun- 
try so various and so rich in its attractions ; and this 
I say after having premised, in a previous chapter, 
that I am a reluctant admirer of " fine views," and 
very unwilling to describe them. 

It is a pity that the ancient Greeks and Romans 
were not acquainted with the maize plant. The 
nations which have said so many fine and grateful 
things of the vine, the olive tree, and the wheat 
plant, consecrating each of them to a different god 
or goddess, would assuredly have said still more for 
this most kindly boon of a beneficent Nature. The 
rapid growth of the maize, its size and noble appear- 
ance, the value of all its parts, and the immense 
returns it makes to the cultivator in comparison with 
any other cereal, would certainly, in their eyes, have 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 75 

placed it at the head of all products of nature. As 
it is, I hardly think a civil word has ever been said 
for it by the poets of a country which it has so much 
benefited. It is true, indeed, that maize was not 
introduced, or at least, did not begin to thrive, in 
Portugal, until after true poetry had ceased to do 
so ; and since then, a spirit of such fastidiousness 
and false refinement has taken possession of the 
nation — both verse-makers and others — that so com- 
monplace and vulgar a subject as maize could hardly 
be brought into verse. The prevailing delicacy on 
such a point is, in fact, like that which actuated the 
Dublin clergyman who had to preach a sermon upon 
the Potato Famine, and succeeded in not pronounc- 
ing the word ee potato " once in his whole discourse. 
A preacher of this fastidious sort would be applauded 
in this country ; and there is many a word quite as 
good as or better than " potato," that a Portuguese 
would not dream of saying outright in good com- 
pany. In some parts of the country, it is a positive 
solecism to talk of a dog ; the animal must be named 
apologetically as a puppy, a " cachorro" No Portu- 
guese of any class will name that shocking animal 
the pig. If he must be alluded to — and it is neces- 
sary sometimes, seeing that the Portuguese are very 
fond of him cooked, he is called "the fat animal," 
"cevada;" and if a Portuguese is driven into a 
corner and absolutely forced to employ the word, he 



76 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

will use the diminutive " porquito" a little pig, and 
even that only under his breath, and with the phrase, 
" by your leave." 

I have been amused by reading the translation 
into Portuguese of a French savant's account of a 
fossil bone cave, in which had been found, among 
other remains, abundant bones of swine. The 
Portuguese translator ingeniously eluded all direct 
mention of the animal ; and as often as science 
clearly demanded the plain word " pig 5 " he would 
have recourse to some ingenious paraphrase, such 
as, " a familiar mammal, which we still employ as 
food," and so forth ! 

If this foolish prudery applied only to the two 
animals held abominable by the law of Islam, it 
might be traced to the influence of the Moors ; but 
it applies to a hundred other words, things and 
ideas, which the Moors never dreamt of interdicting; 
for instance, no one in Portugal ventures to speak of 
a certain migratory bird, which both Shakespeare 
and Moliere have mentioned allusively, although I 
believe no other nation in Europe thinks it wrong to 
speak familiarly and even lovingly of the bird in 
question. Moreover, the modern Portuguese dislike 
of calling a spade a spade by no means prevailed 
during the best period of Portuguese literature, 
which was two centuries after the Moors had left the 
country. The present fastidiousness dates from a 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 77 

time when letters, as well as morals, began to de- 
generate ; a period in literature which is, oddly 
enough, as Mr. Matthew Arnold may think, desig- 
nated " Culturismo" which would probably, by its 
admirers, be translated " culture ; " a period during 
which it was thought well to stimulate an over- sensi- 
bility of emotion and an over-refinement of expression. 
This grew into effeminacy and ended in absolute 
decadence. These influences have, unfortunately, 
never ceased to have sway in Portugal. Among 
the prose writers of the present day are many 
unmanly sentimentalists, or rhetoricians; and any 
true poetical utterance in the land of Camoens and 
Ferreira, of Miranda and Bernardes, is rare, if not 
altogether absent : — 

" The languid strings do scarcely move, 
The sound is forced, the notes are few." 

I had a long day's journey before me, for I had 
determined to reach the mountain of the Gaviarra 
before nightfall. I rode as fast as the boy I had 
engaged at Ponte de Lima could keep up with on 
foot, and the result was that upon reaching Arcos 
where I had determined to breakfast, he was dead 
tired, and I had to send him back. Taking a new 
guide, I followed a fair road up the course of a trout 
stream, which has its sources in the Gaviarra itself. 
To my left, as I ascended, was the wild range of the 
Estrica ; on the right rose the taller mountains of 



78 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

the Soajo range among which towers the lofty, 
Outeiro Maior, the Great Hill, properly called the 
Gaviarra. 

The ascent is gradual, and as the cultivation of 
the valley is left behind, the mountain becomes bleak 
and its scenery comparatively tame. I had, too, the 
common bad luck of a mountain ascent. Though 
the day had been clear and fine in the morning, a 
suspiciously misty appearance had hung all day 
about the summits of the mountain, and towards 
noon had turned into a drizzling rain, which 
gradually descending the sides of the hill, blotted 
out all the features of the landscape. I rode on for 
several hours, skirting the side of the hill with a 
continuous ascent, the view never extending more 
than a hundred yards around me. It was late 
evening before we reached a shepherd's house, or 
hut, where my guide had promised that we could 
pass the night. Two men occupied the house, 
whose solitary room served for kitchen, dining-room, 
and bed-room. There was no stable or out-house 
of any kind, and as we were high enough up on the 
mountain to feel a considerable change of tempera- 
ture, I was in some difficulty about my horse. How- 
ever, the shepherds soon settled the matter by 
building up a little lean-to of green branches 
against the sheltered side of the house ; and in this 
improvised stable he passed the night, probably as 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 79 

agreeably as his master himself did on a bundle of 
rye straw on the floor of the cabin. 

"We had bought an " odre," or skin, of Moncao 
wine at Arcos ; and with this, some black bread, 
goatVmilk cheese, and a large bowl of ewe's milk, 
the two shepherds, my guide, and myself, made, at 
any rate, a cheerful meal — for the Moncao wine is 
the best ' in this province, and my hosts enjoyed it 
amazingly. One of them after supper sang a good 
Spanish song, recounting the adventures — of a very 
* { picaresque" and rascally description for the most 
part — of one Don Spavento ; the hero of the song 
being supposed to sing in his own person, and to be 
so overcome by the enjoyment of his recollections as 
to break out, at the end of each stanza, into a 
laughing refrain of " Ha ! ha ! ha ! Dice Don Spa- 
vento," and this being taken up in chorus by the 
whole strength of our company, so shook the walls 
of the cabin as to startle my horse outside, and to 
raise a second chorus of bleating in the flocks of 
goats and sheep which had crowded round the 
building. The man told me that in his youth he had 
been a mule- driver, and had learnt this song on the 
Spanish frontier. The song was so successful that, 
at my particular request, it was repeated, and then, 
the singer's repertory being exhausted, and feeling 
very tired, I got some fresh straw, and spreading it 
upon the floor slept fairly well till daybreak. The 



80 TEA VELS IN PORTUGAL. 

morning was misty again, but it did not rain, and I 
started at once up the mountain. The summit was, 
I should imagine, about two thousand feet above 
our heads, and the early morning air was exceedingly 
cold. The slope was stiff, but the ascent by no 
means difficult. 

I am one of that minority who hold that moun- 
tains were not exclusively formed for the purpose of 
being ascended. I even go so far as to think a 
writer owes some apology to his reader for taking 
him into the clouds, either by means of a mountain 
or otherwise ; and I, for one, shall not be sorry when 
we see the end of a great deal of printed enthusiasm 
on the subject of Alpine climbing. 

The mist began to lift, as the shepherds had 
foretold that it would, when the sun rose ; and con- 
tinuing my ascent, I had presently spread out 
before me a vast panorama to the south and to the 
east, with a radius of probably not less than a hun- 
dred miles. The greater part of the Province of the 
Minho lay immediately to the south-west, with its 
innumerable white villages dotting the dark green of 
the landscape. The province is a hilly one, but in 
comparison with the more mountainous regions 
within my ken, it looked, from this great height, 
almost like a fruitful wooded plain. To the south, 
about ten miles off, but appearing from the clearness 
of the air to be almost within rifle shot, lay the 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 81 

ranges of the Gerez Mountains, looking as if they 
were cast in steel, so sharply did their barren peaks 
and ridges stand out in the transparent atmosphere. 

Beyond the hills of the Gerez, the eye ranges 
over a confused mass of hills of a lesser elevation, 
which compose the Province of Traz-os-Montes, 
beyond which the River Douro flows ; and the sight, 
passing thence over the hill country of Beira, is 
limited to the south by the noble range of the 
Estrella Mountains, which stretch nearly across the 
whole central part of Portugal. The hill country 
between the Gerez and the Estrella is drained by 
the Douro, whose sources lie to the eastward, and 
much farther than the eye can now reach, in the 
heart of Leon. To the north-east, the eye ranges 
across the Spanish frontier towards the Asturias, in 
the direction of Astorga and Leon. 

The traveller who has looked over this stretch 
of country from the Gaviarra, has seen the very 
cradle of the Portuguese nation, which is an offshoot 
of the vigorous race which in the eighth, ninth, and 
tenth centuries inhabited the great basin and water- 
shed of the Douro, from the heights of the Asturias, 
of Leon and of Old Castile, as far as the mountain 
ranges of Beira and Traz-os-Montes ; the race of 
men who, in the Asturias, preserved some sort of 
independence, when the rest of the Peninsula was 
overrun by the Arabs, who were the first to rise 

G 



82 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

against the enemies of their faith and of their 
country, and by whose efforts the Moslem was 
finally thrust from the soil in all parts of the Penin- 
sula. "When the long war between Christian and 
Mahometan commenced and the Christians first 
began to hold their ground, it was in the region we 
are now surveying that some of the earlier struggles 
took place. One of the finest passages in the 
" Cid " relates the siege of Zamora, on the Douro, 
by the Campeador himself and the King of Leon ; 
and the hills about Zamora are the eastern limit of 
the view from the Gaviarra. The northern portions 
of the fertile province of the Minho were early 
wrested from the Moors ; and here, in 1095, Count 
Henry as Viceroy of the Leonese king, established 
his court in the centre of this province, at Gui- 
maraens— whose battlemented castle walls, thirty or 
forty miles away, due south from us, are distinctly 
visible. 

At Guimaraens the son of Count Henry was born 
— Affonzo Henriquez— the most heroic figure in 
Portuguese history; whose adventures and conquests, 
authenticated by Christian and Moorish chroniclers, 
are hardly less romantic than those which go to make 
up the great epic of the " Cid." It was in the wild 
country at the foot of the Gaviarra that he fought, 
while still a mere boy, the Galician Count who had 
stirred up a civil war in Portugal, and finally defeated 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 83 

him at San Mamede, near Guimaraens. Then turning 
his arms against the Saracens, he routed them utterly 
at the battle of Ourique, on the field of which he as- 
sumed, for the first time, the title of King of Portugal. 
In reading the history of the extraordinary race 
of men which sprang from the wild hill country 
below my feet, and whose subsequent exploits by 
land and by sea fill such an important page of the 
world's history, the story of their early vicissitudes 
and adventures has always seemed to me more sur- 
prising than even the discoveries, conquests, and 
colonizations of after years, in foreign and distant 
lands. Surely it is a marvel that so numerically 
small a tribe — for they hardly amounted to a nation 
— should have had the energy and the constancy to 
hold their independence against the attacks of 
powerful nations of their own race, commanded by 
leaders accounted the most accomplished captains 
of their day ; that they should have done this 
when their efforts were hampered by a civil war, 
and when the whole of their southern frontier was 
occupied by a warlike race in never-ceasing hos- 
tility with them ; that having disposed of their 
Christian enemies, they should have turned upon 
the Mahometans, and won upon them the greatest 
Christian victory which had yet been obtained in 
the Peninsula. It might, perhaps, not be so strange 
that such a series of successes and victories should 



84 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

have resulted from the genius of one great sove- 
reign and commander, or the accident of weak- 
ness or division among their enemies ; but that 
these successes should have continued for long cen- 
turies after the death of the first monarch, and that 
after many battles and many victories over their two 
powerful enemies, the Moors should finally have 
been crushed at the decisive battle of Salado and 
the Castilians at Aljubarrota, — this, I think, proves 
a loyal fortitude and, perhaps as much as anything 
else, a faithful devotion to their independence as a 
people, almost beyond example. 

Moreover, it is to be remembered that this main- 
tenance of Portuguese independence under so many 
circumstances of difficulty, was owing in no case to 
the inaccessibility of their territory, as with the 
Swiss, or, to some extent, with the Greeks ; for I 
can recollect no instance of the Portuguese having 
owed victory to the accident of a strong position ; 
nor, again, was the coherence of the Portuguese 
ranks due to any sort of feudalism or servile com- 
pulsion. The rallying to the standard of their 
chiefs resulted from a feeling, partly of clanship, and 
partly of loyal and dutiful devotion of each private 
interest to the public good. The noble motto of 
one of the earliest and greatest of the Portuguese 
kings was " Polla ley e polio grey" — " We rule by 
law and by our people's will." 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 85 

On returning to the shepherds' house, I found 
them away on the mountain side with their flocks. 
The guide was still asleep on the floor, and my horse 
had eaten all the bundle of rye- straw I had put 
before him in the morning — the poorest horse-pro- 
vender there is. I had ridden him not far from 
thirty miles, over hilly roads, the day before ; and 
though not in any condition, he had carried me 
admirably. He had now passed the night on a cold 
hill-side, in a draughty shed, and with scanty food ; 
but he was as fresh as ever — an example to travellers 
to make sure of a good horse at the beginning of 
their work. Nothing is so tiring to the body 
nor so wearing to the mind, as to be compelled 
to ride a weak, stumbling horse on a long day's 
journey. The pleasure of travel is quite spoiled by 
it; whereas to ride a strong and willing beast 
through a pleasant country is the summa felicitas 
of travelling — the healthiest, the most exhilarating, 
and the most independent mode of progression that 
human ingenuity has yet invented. 

I have recounted, in a previous chapter, how I 
accidentally fell in with this horse at Yigo, and how 
I gave the unusual price of twenty-five pounds for 
him — he being of the Andalusian breed, and not 
likely to meet with appreciation so far from his 
home as Galicia. He was hardy, untiring, easy in 
his paces, gentle, and very sure-footed. His only 



86 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

fault was one shared by many Andalusian horses — 
a delicate appetite. He was what English grooms 
call " a shy feeder." During my connection with 
him, he has certainly made acquaintance with some 
exceptional kinds of horse-food. He has had to eat 
green fern-fronds ; once I had to employ a boy to 
gather the leaves of a neighbouring ash ; and often 
I have eked out his " feed " with slices of black 
bread : and these varieties of provender he seemed 
to prefer to ordinary horse-food. 

I descended the hill on the Spanish side, and 
followed the border line between Spain and Portugal 
for several hours along one of the very worst bridle- 
paths it was ever my fortune to travel over. Cross- 
ing the River Lima near Flervael, I had hoped, by 
a very long ride, to reach the city of Chaves the 
same day ; but my route lay through the passes of 
the Gerez, over which my guide had only a very 
faint notion of the road, and I fully believe that I 
had ridden over forty miles before reaching the 
fortified city of Montalegre, which is only half-way 
to Chaves. 

Montalegre is perhaps the smallest cathedral 
city or fortified place in the world. At the most, 
eighty to a hundred inhabitants are contained in its 
ruined and tumble-down houses. Its raison d'etre is 
clearly the strongly placed castle on the hill above 
the city, which guards a path through the frontier. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 87 

The walls of the town are still in fair condition, and 
its position, in the extreme north-east corner of the 
kingdom, would obviously give Montalegre con- 
siderable military importance, so long as war with 
Spain was possible. The tiny cathedral is of poor 
Renaissance work, and possesses no architectural 
interest whatever. 

Leaving my useless guide at this place, I fol- 
lowed an average road through the mountains to 
Chaves, situated on an extensive and fertile table- 
land. Chaves is an important place in a military 
point of view : its fortifications command the rich 
valley of the River Tamega, leading straight from 
Spain into the heart of Portugal. It does not, how- 
ever, derive its name of Chaves — " the Keys " — 
from this circumstance, as Murray's Handbook ab- 
surdly asserts, but because the Romans had called 
it " Aquas Flavise," or " Flaviae," from its hot wells ; 
and by the not unusual change of the Latin "Fl" 
into the Portuguese "Ch" — as "Flamma" into 
"Chamma" — Flavise (in the accusative, Flavias) 
becomes Chaves. The many Roman inscriptions 
and milliary columns in the neighbourhood, and the 
fact that it was a principal station on the Roman 
road from Braga, and that its name is of purely 
Roman origin, would seem to indicate that the 
place was actually founded by the Romans, and not 
the site of a town previously established. The re- 



88 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

mains of Moorish domestic architecture in the 
streets show that the town was afterwards held by 
the Saracens, and the existence of a richly-built 
church of the style of the twelfth century* proves 
that it was in early and permanent occupation by 
the Christians. Thus a traveller who arrives at 
Chaves without even having heard of its existence 
before, may, by merely looking about him, construct 
some sort of a history of the town. 

My road for the last two days had lain altogether 
among the peaks and precipices of the Gerez Moun- 
tains — a range presenting those abrupt changes of 
view, that variety of rock form and colouring, that 
abundance of streams, and that frequency of cascades 
in narrow, precipitous ravines, and above all, that 
wild and variously contorted sky-line, which, taken all 
together, go to the making-up of the finest moun- 
tain scenery. I have, indeed met nowhere in the 
Peninsula (except, perhaps, among the mountains of 
Konda, in Andalusia) with scenery to be compared 
with this of the Gerez range. Amid these wild and 
inaccessiblo hills is still found one of the rarest 
of European quadrupeds — the Portuguese ibex, or 
wild goat ; this range being the solitary Portuguese 



* I have elsewhere fully described this building of good Roman- 
esque work. The churches of this style of architecture, which would 
be better termed "Pre-Gothic " than " Romanesque," are very rare in 
Portugal. Details would probably not interest the general reader. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 89 

habitat of the species,* The wolf, the roe-deer, the 
Portuguese lynx (Felis joardina), and, perhaps, the 
wild boar, are likewise to be found among these 
mountains ; while the golden eagle is frequently to 
be seen perched upon the topmost needle of some 
precipitous cliff, or wheeling in slow flight over the 
narrow mountain valleys. 

A traveller in Portugal has the advantage, or 
disadvantage, of being in a land whose fauna and 
flora have been less studied than those of any other 
country in Europe. The lofty mountain ridges 
which divide Portugal from Spain, and Spain from 
Europe, should — according to modern theories — 
have a tendency to separate and localize species ; 
and apparently this has to some extent been the case 
in Portugal. A good, patient naturalist, of the class 
of Dr. Darwin or Mr. Wallace, who would be con- 
tent to study the language, and then to spend three 
or four years in the remoter parts of Portugal, 
would, I have little doubt, achieve the discovery of 
many new species, and confer great benefits upon 
the science of natural history. 

* This animal has been considered by naturalists to be identical 
with Mgoceros Caucasica, the ibex of the Caucasus ; but the able 
Director of the Zoological Department of the Lisbon Museum, 
Senhor Barbosa, has, in my opinion, satisfactorily shown the ibex of 
the Gerez to be the same with Capra Hispanica, discovered by 
Schimper in 1848 in the Sierra Nevada ; and this, again, is probably 
identical with the very rare JEgoccros Pyrenaica, the Tur, or wild 
goat, of the Pyrenees. 



90 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

As a country for a mere sportsman, Portugal 
presents hardly any attractions. The difficulties of 
language would be insuperable to the ordinary sport- 
ing tourist ; nor would the chance of bagging perhaps 
fifteen brace of red-legged partridges or quail in a 
day repay him for the trouble of getting to the 
shooting ground, or of putting up with very wretched 
accommodation. Woodcock visit the country in im- 
mense numbers in winter, but the pine forests over 
which they spread themselves are so vast, that very 
few, comparatively speaking, are killed. Seven brace 
in a day, among four or five guns, is considered a 
remarkably good day's sport. Snipe are abundant, 
but the shooting of them is an unsatisfactory sport. 
A bog which one day contains thousands of birds, 
may, the next, not hold a dozen. The great bustard 
is to be found on the plains of Alemtejo and Estre- 
madura, but not in great numbers ; the little bustard 
appears to be a half-migratory species, and, in some 
years, is tolerably abundant in the southern pro- 
vinces; so, also, is that pretty African migrant, the 
sand grouse. The pheasant has been introduced in 
some of the royal preserves, and the fallow deer re- 
introduced. The red deer is supposed, by some 
enthusiastic naturalists, to be still found in the 
mountains of the Estrella range. 

In the way of fishing, there is very little to be 
done. The Douro is the southernmost limit, in 



TRAVELS m PORTUGAL. 91 

Europe, of the migration of the salmon ; one or two 
fish only are caught in the year. In the Lima, the 
next large river to the north, salmon and salmon- 
trout are more frequently taken ; and in the Minho, 
on the. Spanish frontier, both are netted in consider- 
able numbers : but I never heard of any one having 
caught a salmon in Portugal with rod and line. In 
all the mountain streams, trout are abundant ; and 
in a few they run to some size. The streams which 
I had crossed or ridden by, within the last three 
days, were full of trout ; but a singular difficulty in 
the way of angling is presented in Portugal by the 
growth of the vine. Almost every river is bordered 
by pollarded oaks or chestnuts, on which are trained 
vines which grow in festoons from one tree to the 
other, so that an angler is greatly hindered in the 
casting of his line. 

Although a sportsman who cared for nothing but 
sport would find Portugal a dull country, a person 
who has paid any attention to the natural history of 
his own land would find it full of interest. Very 
many quadrupeds, birds, and plants scarce or un- 
known in Great Britain are here common. 

The hoopoe is one of the rarest visitors to the 
British Isles : here its thrice-repeated call, like the 
cuckoo's, but less resonant, is as commonly heard 
in the woods in summer as the cuckoo's in England ; 
but, unlike that bird, it is not shy and retiring. 



92 TRAVELS W PORTUGAL. 

Another very interesting bird, the black wheatear 
(Saxicola leucura), a bird nearly the size of a black- 
bird, with a white patch on the back, is very conspi- 
cuous from its familiarity and lively motions. A 
bird of similar habits and appearance, but with red 
markings, has been described to me by the natives : 
it is, probably, a new species. Another curious bird 
is the large Calandra lark, whose song, harsh and 
discordant as it is, the Portuguese seem to prefer 
to that of every other singing bird. Their taste in 
cage birds is certainly strange ; those most frequently 
seen in captivity being this bird, called by the Portu- 
guese cuchicho, an onomatopoetic name — the quail 
and the partridge ! A large proportion of the com- 
mon house-martins winter in the North of Portugal, 
but the chimney-swallows — those with the forked 
tails — all disappear from the northern provinces, so 
far as I have observed ; though a few stay over the 
winter in the warmer parts of Southern Portugal. 
The swifts entirely leave the country in autumn. If 
my observation is correct, this would correspond 
with the apparent susceptibility to cold of these 
three species in Great Britain. At home the 
martins come first and go last, the swallows next, 
and the swifts arrive last and make the shortest stay 
of any. 

Of quadrupeds, the wolf and the fox of Portugal 
are different animals from the common wolf and fox 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 93 

of Europe, the wolf being a large and powerful brown 
variety of Ganis lycaon. The fox is not Ganis vulpes, 
our English fox, but Ganis melanogaster ; and, while 
rather smaller than the fox of England, has a larger 
head, and the throat and under part of the body 
black. It likewise differs from our fox in having the 
pads distinctly smaller, while the brush is much more 
bushy. The civet, the wild cat, and a species of lynx 
are all common in the remoter hills and woods. 

Of reptiles, the great green lizard (Lacerta 
ocellata) is the most interesting. This animal is 
common everywhere, and, in the brilliancy of its 
green, yellow, and blue scales, rivals the beauty of 
the tropical reptiles. The esculent frog and the 
tree-frog, both unknown at home, are common. 
Very common, also, is the so-called " singing toad " 
(Alytes obstetricans), which, unlike the toad of Great 
Britain, lives in dry places, and whose note is heard 
all through the warm nights of summer like the 
tinkle of a small glass bell. 

To an entomologist, Portugal should be a para- 
dise. I have counted eleven different species of 
butterfly on one hedge of lavender,* and this fact 

* Mostly of species common in Great Britain : P. Macaon, our 
English Swallow- tailed butterfly; C. Edusa, the Clouded Saffron; 
our two common English white butterflias ; L. Megcera, the Wall 
butterfly ; C. Cardui, the Painted Lady ; two kinds of Fritillary ; 
two species of the genus Polyommatus, the blue butterflies ; and the 
Red Admiral, V. Atalanta. 



94 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

will no doubt stand me in stead of further descrip- 
tion. 

Of all departments of natural history, that of 
the freshwater fishes has been the most neglected 
in Portugal. The species that are commonly 
known do not exceed half-a-dozen, and include the 
trout, the eel, the barbel, the burbolt, the gudgeon, 
a species of dace and another of roach, neither of 
the two being identical with the British species. 
Besides these there are the migratory fishes — the 
sturgeon, lamprey, shad, salmon, etc. There can 
be little doubt that at least thirty or forty unknown 
or unrecognized species are awaiting the labours of 
some future Crouch or Frank Buckland. 

Travelling on by a good road, six miles of 
gradual ascent brought me to Monforte — as its 
name implies, a stronghold on a hill. Such places, 
perched on the summits of precipitous cliffs, were 
not inaptly christened Aguiares — eyries, or eagles' 
nests; and there is a curious legend attached to 
this very castle, so characteristic of the wild times 
of the early years of the monarchy, that it is well 
worth transcribing it from the monkish chronicler 
who relates it. 

A certain Dom Goncalvo de Souza, one of the 
most noble and powerful knights of the reign of 
King Affonzo Henriquez, was, in the words of the 



TRAVELS m PORTUGAL. 95 

writer of the life of Saint Senhorina, " taking his 
pleasure one day on his own estate, when messen- 
gers came with word that the enemy had invaded 
his lands, towns, and strong places, and were then 
laying siege to his castle of Aguair. Whereupon 
Dom Goncalvo forthwith sounded the alarm, and 
summoned his people, and hastened with them to 
relieve the said castle. When they came to where 
the body of Saint Senhorina lies buried, Dom Gon- 
calvo forgot, in his hurry, to beg for her grace and 
intercession, and, as they passed before the holy 
spot, the mule on which the Cabalheiro rode 
remained fixed to the ground, and neither blows 
nor the spur would make her stir a step. Then 
Dom Goncalvo, recollecting that he was passing 
the shrine without having prayed to the saint, 
turned his mule, who willingly made towards the 
chapel, where the Cabalheiro performed his orisons, 
commending himself to the protection of the saint. 
After which he continued his journey, raised the 
siege of Aguiar, pursued the enemy, and routed 
them. Ever after this, Dom Goncalvo recom- 
mended all good Christians to do proper homage to 
Saint Senhorina." 

The enemies who thus attempted to surprise this 
nobleman were either the Moors or the men of Leon 
and Castile. Though no date is fixed by the 
chronicler, we learn incidentally from the Charter 



96 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

of the Cathedral of Braga, dated 1151, that Dom 
Goncalvo de Souza, the knight in question, was 
then Governor of Monforte, above Chaves — <: Dom- 
nus Gonsalvus de Souza tenens Montein fortem 
supra Flavias." 

The site of this miracle is still holy ground, and 
a square of earth is marked out with stone crosses 
on a hillside, where the body of Saint Senhorina is 
supposed to be lying. These assemblages of four, 
six, or eight stone crosses, disposed in an oblong 
square, are exceedingly numerous in this province 
and in that of the Minho. They mark the site of 
a miracle or supernatural event in the life of some 
local saint, whose memory is kept green by the annual 
exhortations of the priest of the parish. From time 
to time the pious of the neighbourhood frequent the 
place; they kneel in front of each cross in turn, 
repeating so many aves and paternosters. The 
more zealous go the round of the crosses on their 
knees, but I have not observed that even this morti- 
fication of the flesh (on the generally stony ground) 
is any promoter of gravity, for they laugh and talk 
freely between the stations. Such religious exer- 
cises are, at most, little more than play, and this 
sort of pious croquet is frequently imposed as a mild 
penance. 

The " Romarias," or annual pilgrimages to holy 
places, are more serious affairs, and occupy a large 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 97 

place in the social life of the peasantry and lower 
classes. The Eomaria to the church of Matho- 
sinhos, near Oporto, which contains a miraculous 
image, and that to the Bom Jesus at Braga, last 
three or four days, and are the most important in 
the kingdom. They are attended by persons of all 
classes from every part of Portugal, sometimes to 
the number of from twenty to thirty thousand. 
Pilgrimages to less celebrated shrines, many of them 
on solitary mountains, are also very numerous. 
They are chiefly resorted to by the peasants, and often 
by as many as two or three thousand, who live al 
fresco during the few days that the Eomaria 
lasts. Bread is baked and food cooked for this 
multitude daily in huge stone ovens, which, 
when the assemblages are over, are the only 
marks left of them ; and these ovens to the 
number of twenty or thirty in a row, on a solitary 
hillside, might puzzle a traveller who had not learnt 
their use. 

At these gatherings there are sermons to be 
heard, religious exercises to be performed, and — 
as the occasion has some of the characteristics of 
a country fair — there is an immense deal of laugh- 
ing, gossiping, dancing, and singing; very much, 
indeed, what takes place at our own open-air 
Eevival meetings, with some of their worst features 

left out. 

7 



98 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Although a stranger might think, at first 
sight, that their religion sits loosely on the 
Portuguese, he would be much mistaken. They 
are not a bigoted people, but they are deeply 
imbued with an earnest spirit of religion. 






CHAPTER V. 

The Castle of Braganza — Hebrew Type of Face in Braganza — Impor- 
tant Part Flayed by Jews in Portuguese History — Conversation with 
a Jewish Traveller — His Story of Spinosa — Mirandella — Mono- 
tonous Cuisine of Well-to-do People in Portugal — Legend of the 
Bruxas — Villa Real ; its Architecture — Return of Enriched Adven- 
turers from India and Brazil — Bull Life in Portuguese Country 
Towns — Curious System of Courtship — Anecdote — Description of 
Port Wine Country — Sketch of the History of Port Wine — Has a 
Literature of its Own — The Pass over the Maruo Mountains. 

The reader who has followed me hitherto in my ride 
in Portugal has been taken along the northern and 
eastern frontier line, through the fine scenery of the 
Gerez Mountains ; past the numerous strongholds 
which were erected, during the early years of the 
monarchy, to guard the Portuguese line from Casti- 
lian and Leonese incursions, and past the old Koman 
station of Aquse Flavise, and the hill stronghold of 
Monforte. From thence I proceeded, across the 
table-land of Traz-os-Montes, to the once famous 
city of Braganza, whence the reigning dynasty of 
Portugal derives its title, and which is still the most 
important city along the whole frontier between 
Spain and Portugal, though its prosperity has greatly 
declined of late years. 



100 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

The town is neither clean nor picturesque ; the 
cathedral is essentially mean, and has not even the 
merit of antiquity ; but what is worth coming from 
far to see is the magnificent castle on the hill above 
the city — the most perfect remaining stronghold in 
Portugal, with the exception of the Castle of Villa 
da Feira, near Oporto. The Braganza Castle was 
rebuilt by the second king of Portugal on the founda- 
tions of a fort erected probably by Affonzo Henri- 
quez himself, and made a place of great strength. 
The works were evidently not neglected, as time 
went on, for it contains remains of all the improve- 
ments and refinements in the art of defence made in 
the pre-artillery period. 

Besides the castle, the one point of interest which 
struck me at Braganza was the marked Hebrew type 
of face in the inhabitants. The strong immixture of 
Jewish blood in the Portuguese race is a fact thaf> 
Portuguese writers are not fond of dwelling upon. 
The former large population of Jews in Portugal is 
usually stated to have emigrated in consequence of 
the persecutions of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies ; but there is little doubt that the writers who 
have treated of this great exodus of the Jewish race 
from the Peninsula have very much overrated the 
extent of the emigration, so far at least as Portugal 
is concerned. Immense numbers were driven out of 
Spain by the cruel bigotry of Ferdinand and Isabella. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 101 

They left Spain by various issues, arid embarked for 
Italy, Turkey, Morocco, and the Levant. Very many, 
perhaps the majority, made their way across the 
border into Portugal, where numerous communities 
of Portuguese Jews already existed, and had come 
to be treated with comparative fairness. In Portu- 
gal they had long been allowed to appoint judges of 
their own tribe, and were otherwise favoured. They 
had attained a high degree of culture : they studied 
medicine, science, and letters. Among a rude people 
of warriors and husbandmen, the Jews succeeded, to 
some extent, to the place left vacant by the Moors. 
They were the authors, the merchants, and the 
physicians of the nation : they founded a famous 
academy in Lisbon, which produced several eminent 
mathematicians, grammarians, poets, theologians, 
botanists and geographers. The first book printed 
in Portugal was printed by a Jew. 

When the last of the Moors had been banished 
from Andalusia by the conquest of Granada, King 
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella turned the edge of 
their intolerance against the Jews; who were in 
such numbers and of such social and commercial 
importance that, in the opinion of a Jewish historian 
of these events, the Israelites of Spain, if they had 
not kept their eyes constantly fixed upon Palestine 
as their own destined country, would have been 
strong enough to overthrow the Spanish Govern- 



102 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

ment ! According to the JeYv T ish writer, Da Costa, 
no less than eight hundred thousand of the richest, 
most industrious, and most intelligent subjects of 
Spain were driven from her shores by the edict of 
her Most Catholic Sovereigns. It is not too much 
to say that the moral and material decadence of Spain 
dates from that day ; for, from that time forward, 
the triumph of religious bigotry progressed till it 
reached the stupid fanaticism of Philip II., and the 
virtual extinction, under his reign, of all individual 
thought and movement. 

The Spanish Jews who crossed into Portugal 
hoped for a good reception from the King, John 
II. ; but they were received upon hard conditions, a 
poll tax was at once exacted from them, and they 
were only permitted to remain eight months in the 
country, under penalty of being sold as slaves. 
When the eight months had expired, many of them 
who were unable to leave the country were enslaved,, 
their children were baptised and taken from them. 

The death of King John, and the accession to 
the throne of King Emmanuel, did little to improve 
their lot. He released the Jews enslaved by his 
predecessor, but his own " piety" and the Spanish 
influences exerted upon him through his projected 
marriage with the daughter of Queen Isabella, led 
him in 1496 to issue a decree ordering the inline- 
diate conversion of all Moors and Jews, under pain 



TRAVELS IN PORTVGAL. 103 

of banishment. King Emmanuel was, however, one 
degree more prudent than the Spanish sovereign; 
fearing to lessen the population of his small kingdom 
by so large an emigration, he commanded that all 
children under fourteen should be detained and con- 
verted to Christianity. There can be no doubt that 
this cruel but politic order induced many Jews to 
embrace Christianity. The Jewish histories dwell 
on the complete national exodus, both from Spain 
and Portugal, and they paint in strong colours the 
heroic adherence to their religious convictions both 
of Spanish and Portuguese, and the terrible suffer* 
ings they underwent in consequence ; nevertheless, 
the evidence of physiognomy and of family tradition 
are all against this alleged universality of the move- 
ment, and, if a change of name had not been made 
compulsory in the days of persecution, so also 
undoubtedly would be the evidence of names. 
There are, unquestionably, innumerable families 
of Jewish lineage in Portugal, and Israelitish 
blood flows in the veins of many noble Portuguese 
families. It is related that when that foolish bigot, 
King Joseph, proposed to his minister Pombal that 
all Jews in his kingdom should be compelled to wear 
white hats as a distinctive badge, that sagacious 
minister made no objection, but when next he ap- 
peared in Council it was with two white hats, — " One 
for his Majesty and one for himself," explained 



104 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Pombal, and the King said no more about his pro- 
posal. 

That great numbers of Portuguese Jews left the 
country is, however, notorious enough ; and it is 
evidence of the high culture attained by the race in 
the Peninsula that, upon their settling in Holland, 
where many Jews from Germany and other parts of 
Europe were already gathered, the Jews of Spain and 
Portugal were looked upon as the aristocracy of the 
race.* The Peninsular Jews in Holland preserved 
the tradition of their origin so long and so steadfastly 
that the Spanish and Portuguese languages were 
used by them, as well as Dutch, not only in the for- 
mal services of the synagogue, but in daily life, even 
until the commencement of the present century. 

The type of face in Braganza is, as I have said, 
remarkably Jewish. I was struck by it at every turn 
in the street. A girl in the kitchen of the inn was 
in features so strongly Israelitish, that I think the 
least observant physiognomist would have noticed it. 
The reason of the attraction of the Jewish race to 



* A liberal in politics and religion may reflect with satisfaction 
that the cause of Protestantism and Liberal government against the 
bigotry of an arbitrary King of England, was furthered by a Jew 
whose ancestors had been driven into exile by an intolerant and 
arbitrary King of Portugal. It is an historical fact that William 
III. received considerable pecuniary advances, on the eve of his de- 
parture for England, from the Baron de Suasso, a Portuguese Jew 
of Amsterdam. 



TEA VELS IN PORTUGAL. 105 

Braganza was, no doubt, its importance as a trading 
centre. A large contraband trade — a kind of com- 
merce peculiarly suited to the subtle and energetic 
Israelite — was for many years carried on between 
Portugal and Spain. The velveteens so much worn 
by the Spanish peasantry are manufactured at Bra- 
ganza, and, until a recent change in the Spanish 
tariff, were chiefly made to be smuggled across the 
border. 

There was a gentleman in the inn at Braganza 
who was a traveller on horseback like myself. He 
lived, he told me, at Evora, but had friends and re- 
lations in Braganca. He was about to journey to 
Oporto, and, as our routes were to be the same for 
two days, I proposed to him that we should travel 
together. Although he had by no means the char- 
acteristic features of his race, he was, as he informed 
me, of Jewish extraction: This gentleman was one 
of the very few travelled Portuguese with whom I 
have met. He had visited most of the great cities 
of Portugal and Spain, and had been in France, 
Belgium, and Holland. He was full of information 
about his own people, and was, generally, a well- 
read, well-informed man. On my asking him if the 
rich Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam maintained any 
kind of relations with the members of their tribe in 
Portugal, he said they did; that a Portuguese or 
Spanish Jew going to Holland would be recognized 



106 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

as a sort of distant relative by families of his own 
name; that all Peninsular Jews and Christians of 
Jewish lineage retained the knowledge of their Jewish 
names, though they had mostly abandoned them ; 
that ancestors of his own had settled at Amstel, in 
Holland, and had subsequently either established or 
helped to establish the celebrated porcelain manu- 
facture of that town ; that the workers at Amstel 
had been, almost to a man, Jews from Saxony and 
Portugal. He told me that many Jewish families, 
long after the persecution which accompanied the 
great exodus, and, after their seeming adhesion to 
the Christian religion, had emigrated to Holland 
when the Jews in that country obtained civil rights, 
and had resumed the exercise of their own religion. 
This, he thought, a good deal accounted for their 
long retention of the Portuguese tongue. He had 
himself met with Dutch Jews who understood Por- 
tuguese, and spoke it, but not very fluently. 

I ventured to ask him if it was true, as was 
sometimes alleged, that many Jewish families in 
Portugal, professing Christianity in public, per- 
formed their own rites in private. He smiled, and 
said many thousands of his countrymen had been 
imprisoned, and tortured, and burned at the stake 
by the Inquisition for doing this very thing ; and 
though his people were very clever, they were not 
clever enough to fight against such an instrument of 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 107 

persecution as the Holy Office, which considered a 
bare suspicion of guilt, authenticated by a single 
informer, to be evidence enough to send a man to 
the stake. I reminded him that the Inquisition had 
virtually long ceased to exist. He said it had, but 
that a sort of Inquisition still existed, and was 
enough to maintain a- perfect uniformity of religion. 
The officers of the modern Inquisition, he said, were 
spying servants, officious neighbours, and meddling 
priests. "But," I suggested, "they have no tri- 
bunal to refer, to now." "Indeed they have," he 
answered, " the tribunal of public opinion, and I 
would not be the man in a Portuguese town who 
was suspected by his neighbours of secretly practis- 
ing the rites of Judaism ! " 

My acquaintance was evidently proud of his 
Jewish lineage, but it was not, it seemed to me, the 
common pride of high birth. There was none of 
that natural, if unreasoning, pleasure in tracing 
one's genealogy through a line of noble or illustrious 
ancestors, nor, what might be supposed to take the 
place of such a feeling in the case of a Jew, pride in 
being: descended from a stock the most ancient and 
most unmixed in the world ; but he seemed to be 
proud of belonging to a nation who, wherever their 
lines have fallen, have at once taken the lead over 
their neighbours not only in mere worldly clever- 
ness and the art of acquiring riches, but also in 



103 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

every department in whicli they chose to exert their 
talents. My Jew companion told me that many ot 
the most successful merchants in Portugal were 
Jews from Braganza, and he instanced several names 
in Lisbon and elsewhere. 

He asked me if I knew what was the most diffi- 
cult and best-paid trade in the world. I confessed 
I did not know. " Diamond- cutting," he replied, 
" without a question. It is an art invented by a 
Jew, and to this clay none but Jews can work at it. 
If a man in New York or in Calcutta wants a dia- 
mond cut, he can have it done but in one place, and 
that place is Amsterdam, and all the workmen are 
Jews. The jewellers of London and Paris have 
never yet succeeded in establishing this trade in 
their cities ; and they never will, though there is no 
secret in it — only cleverness." 

Then he reminded me of all the great and 
learned Jews of Portuguese birth, whose names are 
possibly better known to my readers than to myself. 
He gave me so much information that was quite 
new to me, that I came to the conclusion that he 
was himself either a Talmudist or a learned Rabbin. 
He told me of David Jachia, the poet and theologian ; 
of Isaac Avuhaf, whose Menoraas Hammor ("The 
Lamp of Light ") he seemed to suppose I must be 
quite familiar with ; and of the great Moses Ben 
Thaliba, whose work on Grammar, entitled Arcenoam, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 109 

is, of course, so well known to us all. Then he 
asked me if I was aware that Spinosa himself, the 
great philosopher of Amsterdam, was born in Hol- 
land of a father and mother who were themselves of 
Portuguese birth ? I said I was not. Thereupon 
he startled me considerably by demanding to know 
what my opinion might be upon Spinosa's system of 
philosophy. I question whether a harmless tourist 
was ever asked so searching a question before by a 
chance acquaintance. It has been my fortune to 
have submitted myself for vivd voce examination in 
the " schools " of a certain English University ; and, 
later in life, to have been subjected to a still more 
terrible public examination ; but on neither of these 
occasions do I remember to have been so taken 
aback as when called upon for an impromptu 
opinion upon the Pantheism of Spinosa by this 
grave Portuguese gentleman riding by my side on 
the remote mountains of Traz-os-Montes. I 
modestly replied that I was afraid I had not given 
the subject so much attention as it deserved : that 
the system was, no doubt, an ingenious one, but that 
I personally did not much hold with it. 

"Nor do I," said my interlocutor, eagerly; 
"neither do our people. Though Spinosa is, per- 
haps, the greatest man our race has produced, we 
of the house of Israel hold him in no honour. He 
was a recusant and an apostate from our religion. 



110 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

In his lifetime lie heard the execration of his own 
people, and the curses uttered against him in the 
synagogue have clung to his memory." 

" To what do you allude ? " I asked. 

" We have a custom," he said, " that when a Jew 
falls away from the faith of his forefathers, and openly 
reviles their sacred rites and customs, he is solemnly 
excommunicated in the synagogue. It is a thing 
seldom done, because it is very horrible, and because 
it is seldom required ; but it was done in the case of 
Spinosa. He was brought into the synagogue, 
which was hung with black : lighted tapers of black 
wax were held in the hands of the assembled people : 
the Chief Eabbi pronounced a discourse recounting 
Spinosa' s crimes against his faith. Then all present 
approached the centre of the synagogue, and held 
their tapers sideways over a large cauldron filled 
with blood ; and, while the candles slowly dripped 
their wax into the blood, a chant was sung in low, 
harsh tones, reciting the curses of men against the 
infidel, and calling down upon him the vengeance of 
the Most High. When the chant came to an end, 
the tapers were suddenly extinguished in the blood, 
and the synagogue was filled with darkness, and 
there reigned the silence of the grave." 

It is satisfactory to reflect that Spinosa recovered 
some amount of cheerfulness after the performance 
of this horrible ceremony. Almost the only fact 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. Ill 

connected -with, his life that I can recollect is that, 
in late life, he used to derive amusement from mak- 
ing spiders fight together in a box ; whereat, it is 
reported, he would laugh till the. tears ran down his 
cheeks. Although personally I entertain no sym- 
pathy with the philosopher's merriment, and could 
look at fighting spiders by the hour without a laugh, 
it is pleasant to know that Spinosa was not one of 
those eminent characters who, after some great 
tragical event in their lives, " never," as our School 
Histories say, " were seen to smile again." 

Devising of these and kindred topics, we passed 
through the somewhat dreary district which leads to 
Mirandella — a country of upland rye-fields, vines, 
chestnuts, and cork-trees, but showing much bare, 
reddish-yellow soil — a district neither fertile nor 
picturesque. Of Mirandella there is not more to be 
said than that it has a pretty name, and a pretty 
situation on a hill- side, with the River Tua flowing 
below. The inn is clean, the landlady attentive. 
She regaled us with " cameiro de forno"—&o she 
called it — baked mutton, which is an uncommon 
meat in Portugal, except in the highlands. In 
Lisbon, Oporto and other large cities, nothing is so 
rare and nothing so bad as the mutton ; and of the 
natives of all classes in these cities, probably not 
one in a hundred has ever tasted this meat. 

The Portuguese is remarkably conservative and 



112 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

little various in his dinner arrangements, and it 
would be safe to predicate of a* thousand Portuguese 
of the upper and middle classes, that the dinner of 
nine hundred and ninety-nine of them, on any day 
except Friday, would consist of " Game com arroz" 
stewed beef and rice; not forgetting the famous 
" Caldo" the beef broth, with cabbages, bacon, 
haricot beans, etc. On Friday, it would be, 
" Bacalhao e batatas" dried cod-fish and potatoes. 

My Jewish friend had some business in Miran- 
della the next morning, and I could not wait for 
him, having a long ride to Villa Real, so I started 
alone. I rested two hours in the heat of the day, 
at a farmer's house by the way. He hospitably gave 
my horse a feed of corn, and for my benefit he 
opened a bottle of very old wine, a fine strong liquor 
which would pass for port, setting before me with it 
an excellent preserve, made of pumpkins, and some 
wheaten bread. We are here but a league or two 
from the strip of land on each side of the Douro in 
which port wine is made, and the wine already par- 
takes of the character of that which is made in this 
famous district. 

My host accompanied me on his pony for a mile 
or two, and, the conversation having turned upon 
ghostly legends, he told me in the most matter-of- 
fact manner of one of the superstitions current 
among these hills ; which, without being particularly 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 113 

interesting, is more unnaturally horrible than any 
belief of the kind I ever heard of. The people, he 
told me, believe that if a child dies before the first 
communion, without receiving extreme unction, the 
witches (" Bruxas ") have the power of digging it 
up at night-time from its grave with their nails, and 
that having done so they carry the body into the 
hills and there feast upon it ; and if on the way they 
pass a sleeping shepherd lying amidst his flock, they 
will drag the dead child by the hair over his body 
and over those of the sheep, and every living thing 
that this happens to dies before the morning. 

Villa Eeal is a singular place, high up on the 
crest of a steep mountain, and surrounded on two 
sides by ancient walls, which crown a sheer precipice 
of several hundred feet in height, below which flows 
the River Corgo, full of cascades and broken water. 
A broad and fertile valley separates the hill on 
which stands Villa Eeal from the fine range of the 
Marao, which is clearly visible, from its highest 
peaks to its foot, from the ramparts of Villa Eeal. The 
town has a charter from King Diniz, que fez quanto 
quiz — as the popular saying of him runs — who did 
what he chose ; clearly an imputation of arbitrariness 
suggested by the obvious rhyme, for King Dennis 
was, on the whole, the best and wisest sovereign the 
Portuguese ever had. An old church with gro- 

8 



114 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

tesque corbel-table, in the west corner of the town, 
and its surrounding poor looking, granite-built 
houses of immense solidity, are, I have no doubt, 
buildings of the time of this monarch; i.e., the end 
of the thirteenth century. The church itself is poor, 
and not interesting, having been repaired and re- 
stored at a much later date. Another church, off the 
main street, and standing detached, is more interest- 
ing. The western window is of good early four- 
teenth century work. The roof, in the Italian style 
of the early part of the seventeenth century, is 
curious, the whole was^'on roof beino; divided into 
panels, each surrounded by a heavy gilt frame, and 
containing a fairly executed oil picture. .As works 
of art they are of no value, but the effect is singu- 
larly rich. 

Villa Real, though an out-of-the-way place, with 
a detestable climate, — " com nove mezes de inverno e 
tres de inferno" the local proverb says : — with a long 
winter and a very hot summer — could never have 
been an agreeable place of residence, and yet, like 
many of the small towns in North Portugal, it 
seems to have been in former days the chosen home 
of three or four wealthy families. One fine mansion, 
almost a palace in size, occupies half the side of the 
principal " praca" or square, and looks singularly 
out of place in so small a town. 

The existence of so many magnificent private 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 115 

houses in these remote country towns is in many 
cases due to the immense wealth brought home from 
India and from Brazil during the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. Many noble families declining 
into poverty and insignificance, suddenly found 
themselves possessed of splendid fortunes ; but the 
captains and successful adventurers in these distant 
lands were not always noble, and many obscure citi- 
zens of the smaller towns, whose existence had, no 
doubt, been forgotten for years, returned to their 
fellow- townsmen loaded with foreign gold. It is 
these latter men chiefly who built the gorgeous 
palaces in remote parts of Portugal; choosing 
rather to dazzle the inhabitants of their native towns 
than to live in the capital among wealthier and more 
courtly men than themselves. 

There is nothing that would strike a traveller 
fresh from England, Germany, or France more than 
the great rarity of real country houses in Portugal. 
It is entirely against the genius of the people to live 
a country life. The Portuguese is too sociable to 
endure to be surrounded only by woods and fields, 
and mountains. He has many of our northern 
tastes ; he likes field sports in moderation ; he rides, 
in his own style, better than any nation in Europe 
except ourselves ; he has a sincere delight in country 
life and country scenery, but he cannot long support 
the utter solitude of the country. A Portuguese 



116 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

nobleman, if he be rich enough, lives in Lisbon or 
Oporto, and if he has a country house will visit it 
for a month or two in the autumn ; even then he 
will often rather endure the misery of a seaside 
lodging among a crowd than go inland. The larger 
of the country towns have streets full of gentlemen's 
houses ; and here vegetate, from year to year, 
families who are just rich enough to live upon their 
incomes without working. To live, indeed, as the 
Portuguese do in such towns, need cost but little. 
A large house, with a plot of cabbages — a hale yard 
— behind it; with whitewashed walls, floors un- 
carpeted, a dozen wooden chairs, one or two deal 
tables ; no fireplace, not even a stove, either in sitt- 
ing-room or bed-room ; no curtains to the windows, 
no covers to the tables ; no pictures on the walls ; 
no mirrors ; no table pleasantly strewn with books, 
magazines, newspapers, and ladies' work ; no such 
thing visible as a pot of cut flowers ; no rare china, 
no clocks, no bronzes — none of the hundred trifles 
and curiosities with which, in our houses, we show 
our taste, or our want of it, but which either way 
give such an individual character and charm to our 
English homes. All these negatives describe the 
utterly dreary habitations of the middle-class Por- 
tuguese. 

For occupations, the women do needlework, 
gossip, go to mass daily, and look out of window by 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 117 

the hour. Except the one short walk to church at 
eight o'clock in the morning, a Portuguese lady 
hardly ever appears in the streets. As for the men, 
they lounge about among the shops, they smoke 
innumerable paper cigarettes, they take a " siesta " 
in the heat of the day. If there is sunshine, they 
stand in groups at the street corner, with umbrellas 
over their heads ; in winter, they wear a shawl over 
their shoulders, folded and put on three-cornerwise, 
as a French or English woman's shawl is worn : for 
this is a fashion in Portugal, and the Spaniards 
laugh a good deal at their neighbours on the score of 
their being a nation who invert the due order of 
things, and whose women wear cloaks and the men 
shawls. In these towns there is never any news, 
and if two men are seen in eager discussion of some 
matter of apparently immense importance, and if 
one happens to pass near enough to overhear the 
subject of conversation, be sure that one of them is 
plunged in despair or kindling with enthusiasm at a 
fall or rise of a halfpenny in the price of a pound 
of tobacco. An American gentleman of my ac- 
quaintance told me that he had never passed two 
Portuguese in conversation without hearing one of 
two words spoken, " testao " or " rapariga" finance 
or love ! 

There are not even fashions for them to think 
about ; young men and old men dress alike, but the 



118 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

younger ones wear exceedingly tight boots, and 
" when they take their walks abroad "it is obvious 
that they do so in considerable discomfort. The 
young men, however, have one occupation more im- 
portant even than wearing tight boots, and which 
almost, in fact, goes with it — that of making the 
very mildest form of love known amongst men. The 
process, indeed, is carried on in so Platonic a man- 
ner, and with so much proper feeling, that I doubt 
if even the strictest English governess would find 
anything in it to object to. The young gentlemen 
pay their addresses by simply standing in front of 
the house occupied by the object of their affections, 
while the young person in question looks down 
approvingly from an upper window, and there the 
matter ends. They are not within speaking distance, 
and have to content themselves with expressive 
glances and dumb show ; for it would be thought 
highly unbecoming for the young lady to allow a 
billet doux to flutter down into the street, while the 
laws of gravitation stand in the way of the upward 
flight of such a document — unweighted, at least, 
with a stone, and this, of course, might risk giving 
the young lady a black eye, or breaking her father's 
window panes. So the lovers there remain, often 
for hours, feeling no doubt very happy, but looking 
unutterably foolish. These silent courtships some- 
times continue for very long periods, before the 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 119 

lover can ask the fatal question, or the lady return 
the final answer. I heard a story of one such pro- 
tracted courtship which an ingenious novelist might 
easily work into a pretty romance. 

About forty or fifty years ago, before the sup- 
pression of convents in Portugal, a young lady was 
engaged to be married. For some reason or other, 
the marriage did not come off, and the girl was 
placed in a Benedictine nunnery at Oporto. Soon 
after came the abolition of convents ; but while the 
monasteries were absolutely dissolved, and the 
monks scattered, the nuns who were already inmates 
of religious houses were suffered there to remain. 
The young lady, accordingly, on the suppression 
occurring did not leave the Benedictine convent. 
It is to be presumed, however, that the rules of this 
particular establishment were somewhat relaxed, 
for the young gentleman who had been engaged to 
this nun was observed to take his constant stand 
before the barred window of his former mistress's 
cell, while she would become visible behind the 
grating. Here the romance I have imagined would 
perhaps rather lack incident, and, except in a 
master's hand, might grow monotonous, for this 
hopeless courtship lasted no fewer than four-and- 
thirty years, till a bowed and middle-aged man 
paced the pavement, and looked up to a grey-haired 
mistress. It only ended with the death of the lady, 



120 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

a few years ago. Many persons have assured me 
that they had often been eye-witnesses of what I 
have described, and I found that the fact was quite 
notorious in Oporto. It will, of course, be under- 
stood that the stagnating life I have described, with 
its narrow circle of interests and its little mean- 
nesses of household detail, is confined to the half- 
educated, middle class inhabitants of small country 
towns. The higher native society of Lisbon, with 
its courtly influences, and that of Oporto — which 
holds the same relative position to Lisbon that 
Edinburgh did to London before the days of steam — 
can compare with that of any capital of Europe. 
The men are high-bred, courteous, and intelligent, 
and the ladies have a charm of manner and talents 
for society which all foreigners admit. 

Leaving Villa Real for the banks of the Douro, 
my road lay through a broad fertile valley ; but 
soon, as I ascended the ridge of mountains which 
separates the valley of Villa Real from the port 
wine district, I became entangled in a network of 
paths, among which I should have lost my way, had 
I not brought a guide. Passing six or seven miles 
of half-cultivated land, we gradually lost the signs 
of cultivation as we got to the mountain ridge ; we 
then descended slantingly the shoulder of a great 
mountain, and finally, as we rounded its eastern 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 121 

slope, still very high up, I got the first view of the 
Douro, and of the country where port wine is grown 
— a region which, in its way, has not its equal in 
Europe. On either side of the river Douro lies a 
district, about twenty- seven miles in length and six 
or seven in breadth, of steep hills, with narrow, 
ravine- like valleys ; the soil a naked, yellow-brown 
slaty schist ; the configuration of the land like that 
of the South Downs at Lewes, but loftier, less 
rounded, and more precipitous. Looked at from 
where I now stood and seen in the thin atmosphere 
of early morning, with every detail sharp and clear 
as in a photograph, with hill beyond hill extending 
confusedly below, the appearance was that of a 
wilderness of utterly bare and arid peak and valley. 
Not a tree* and hardly a leaf was visible, for the 
vines, later here than in the lowlands, had as yet 
scarcely burst their buds. In curious contrast to 
this seeming barrenness are such evidences of 
immense human labour, as I suppose we should 
have to go to China or Japan to see anything 
to compare with. All over the sides of each 
acclivity, stone terraces have been built, in lines 
running parallel with the horizon ; and in the poor, 
schistous soil thus kept from being washed away by 

* There are plenty of olive and other trees in the wine district, 
but they are in the ravines and valleys, and make a scanty show 
in any landscape. 



122 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

the rains of winter, the vines which make port 
wine are grown. The lines of terrace are in most 
places separated from each other by only a few 
yards ; and the effect of them would be shown on 
paper by representing the hills first, and then draw- 
ing over their surface innumerable faint horizontal 
lines with a pencil. Artistically the effect is hidsous ; 
its singularity is its only attraction. A new and 
strange aspect is given, not to a single hill or 
valley, but to a whole wide range of mountains ; 
and if Portugal were to lapse into an uninhabited 
wilderness to-morrow, this monument of man's 
accumulated handiwork would probably outlast 
every single work of Roman, Goth, Saracen, or 
Portuguese. 

Soon we began to descend a very steep bridle- 
path — so steep, indeed, that it took in places the 
appearance of a stone staircase — and I was forced to 
lead down my horse. We reached the Douro, and 
I found it a bold, rapid. river, running in a narrow, 
rocky trough. The country, though so productive, 
is not by any means fertile-looking, nor in the least 
degree picturesque. 

I was now in the centre of the region of port 
wine production, generally spoken of as the Douro 
District. The flavour of the wine here produced 
depends upon the nature of the soil,* certainly not 

* Here is a careful chemical analysis of the soil of one of the 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 123 

upon its richness, for the surface of the vineyards 
looks like the rubbish thrown up from a stone 
quarry ; and it depends also upon the great heat of 
the summer in a district shut off by lofty hills from 
the north and north-east. The cold of winter 
among these high-lying lands is, however, for Por- 
tugal, very considerable : snow falls and lies, even 
in the valleys, and frost often lasts for the whole 
twenty-four hours. This comparative cold arrests 
the winter growth of the vine, and gives ft the rest 
which the plants of temperate climates require, and 
is probably one cause of the superiority of produce 
of these vines over those grown in other parts of 
Portugal. 

The port of our forefathers was not grown in the 
district where the finer port wine is now produced. 
The little river Corgo joins the Douro a few miles 
below where I now found myself, and its stream 
divides a district of lower elevation and greater fer- 
tility from the precipitous hill country which I had 
but recently been contemplating. The upland vine 
is less productive, but makes a finer wine than that 

finest vineyards in the district : — In 100 parts there are 1*30 of mois- 
ture, 3'40 of organic matter combined with water, 3*70 of sesqui- 
oxide of iron, '80 of protoxide of iron, 6*40 of alumina, -20 of 
sulphate of lime, 1*10 of magnesia, *10 of phosphoric acid, all the 
above being more or less soluble in acid ; and of insoluble consti- 
tuents, in the same 100 parts are 2*40 of potash, 13*20 of alumina, 
•40 of magnesia, '50 of lime, and 66*50 parts of silica. This is the 
soil which makes the best wine in the world. 



124 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

grown in the plain. " Montibus clivisque difficulter 
vinese convalescunt sed firmum probumque saporem 
vini prgebent," says Columella, and the -axiom holds 
good still. For a long time the wines of " Embaixo 
do Corgo " — the land below the Corgo — alone were 
nsed in making port wine. The two bottles a day- 
consumed by Pitt, and the four bottles of Lord Eldon 
were " Lower Corgo " wines. The wine is still 
produced* and is, in wine merchants' phrase, an 
ct elegant • wine ; but inferior in flavour and body 
to the wine of the " Upper Corgo." It was, no 
doubt, a great improvement upon the wines which 
were obtainable at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century : for instance, upon the Florentine wines, 
which Swift, in a letter to Stella, complains would 
not keep sound ; and upon the red wines of Moncao 
and the Bairrada, which upon the passing of Lord 
Methuen's treaty with Portugal in 1703. were im- 
ported respectively from the ports of Vianna and 
Figueira under the name of Portugal wine. These 
wines, the rougher Burgundies and, for very wealthy 
people, the wines of Bordeaux, were what our great- 
grandfathers had to choose from in the way of red 
wine ; and it is not surprising that they came to pre- 
fer the sound, wholesome wine of the Lower Corgo, 
comparatively flavourless as it was, to most of its 
competitors ; which, like the cheap claret of the 
present day, seem to have been, for the most part, 



TBAVELS IN POBTUGAL. 125 

various forms of grape vinegar made endurable with 
burnt sugar and gypsum. 

Port wine has a literature of its own ; and the 
controversy that a few years ago raged on the sub- 
ject was almost as serious as the famous polemical 
dispute, in the last century, between the rival ad- 
mirers of champagne and Burgundy. In the French 
controversy, odes, sonnets and epigrams, as well as 
heavy prose, were bandied from side to side : in the 
port wine discussion, nothing lighter than a double 
pamphlet or an octavo volume was discharged. A 
great deal of ignorant nonsense, and a great deal of 
interested nonsense was written on both sides ; and 
the end of it all is that more and better wine is now 
made and shipped from this district than ever was 
known before. Lest I should be supposed, however, 
to wish to contribute to either of the above cate- 
gories of literature, I will say no more upon the 
subject. 

Sleeping a night at Eegoa, where many of the 
wine merchants have houses and agents, I followed 
a good road on the following day to Oporto. We 
made a slow ascent of several leagues up the Marao 
Mountains, passing continuous vineyards, till Mezao- 
frio is reached ; and the cultivated country being 
past, the road winds among the clefts and ravines of 
bluff, round-topped granite mountains, with here and 
there a huge boulder of stone. At the very top of 



126 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

the pass is the village, or rather, the solitary inn — 
for I saw no other house — of Quintella. 

In the old times, before the road existed from 
Oporto to Eegoa, the English wine merchants had 
to make the journey on horseback at the time of the 
vintage. On the third night they arrived at Quin- 
tella, and dined together by previous appointment — 
a large and friendly party. Tradition says that no 
small quantity of the staple of these gentlemen's 
business was consumed on these occasions. Mutual 
confidences were, no doubt, freely made; but the 
secresy of the grave was maintained on one point, 
viz., the plan each had formed for the campaign 
among the farmers of the wine region. Then, eras 
ingens iterdbimus cequor, on the morrow each man 
divested himself of his sociability and rode off alone, 
secretly, and distrustfully of all other men, to buy the 
new wine. 

The large room, with its painted cornice and 
ceiling, in which these pleasant and convivial meet- 
ings used to take place, was shown me, and the 
numerous tiny bed-rooms near it — conveniently near 
it. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Luxuriance of Vegetation on Western Slopes of Marao Hills — A Large 
Cactus — Affair between General Loison and Portuguese Troops at 
Amarante — Cinque-cento Ornamentation of Church of San Gon- 
$alo — Shetch of Progress of Christian Architecture in Portugal — 
Legend of Saint Goncalo — Undeserved III Repute of People of 
Amarante — An Unlucky and Foolish Mining Company — Curious 
Waterproof Cloak — Portuguese Peasantry Lineal and Unchanged 
Descendants of Conquerors of the Saracens and Castilians — Old 
Charters — Breed of Horses Grossed with Arab Blood in Moorish 
Times — Vallongo — Its Ancient Gold Mines — A Toy Mine at Work — 
Mining Prospects of Portugal — Oporto — Its History — Its Famous 
Siege — Is the Centre of Political and Commercial Movement in 
Portugal — TheDouro ; its Dangerous Bar — An Old Roman Beacon. 

Quintella is the highest point of the pass across the 
mountains of the Marao. A descent of about twelve 
miles leads down to the rich valley of the river 
Tamega and past the town of Amarante on its 
banks, famous for its wine and for its peaches. The 
road down to Amarante winds prettily through high- 
placed valleys and mountain ravines, richly clothed 
with cork and chestnut woods, with springs and 
runnels leaping noisily down the hill sides, and here 
and there a distant view of a valley far below, with 
a stream of water in its centre. 



128 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

These steep and lofty hills — their height is from 
3000 to 4000 feet— -by cutting off the cold east 
winds which blow from the great Spanish plateau, 
and leaving the land exposed to the mild, water- 
laden breezes from the sea, produce a climate which 
is quite different from that of the eastern side of the 
range, the region of the port wine growth before 
mentioned, with the fierce heat of its summers and 
the excessive cold of its winters. On the seaward 
slopes of the hills the summers are cool and damp, 
and the winters comparatively warm. The fine 
growth of the trees and the vivid green of the grass 
and undergrowth testify to this ; and a still more 
marked evidence is to be seen in the development of 
a particular cactus plant about half-way down the 
mountain. I doubt if there be many larger plants 
of this family in Europe. It grows on the south 
side of a rather loftv two-storied house, and has 
already reached to above the eaves. I measured the 
stem near the ground, and found it nineteen inches 
in circumference, the size of a young lady's waist.* 
The species is, if I mistake not, Cactus Peruvianus. 
All the tribes of cactus, gardeners tell us, require a 
damp summer temperature of from sixty to ninety 
degrees of Fahrenheit, and a winter temperature 

* Perhaps I am libelling the fair sex. I have read in a contribu- 
tion to a lady's newspaper that no young lady's waist should exceed 
" thirteen inches in circumference ! " 




^ 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 129 

never lower than forty degrees. Such a climate is 
probably very nearly that of this mountain side. 

The fine old bridge over the Tamega, the pic- 
turesque group of a church and old monastic build- 
ings on the west side, and the tete-de-jpont on the 
east of the river, all show the marks of French 
cannon-balls ; and the blackened ruins and the small 
round holes made by the field pieces in the walls on 
the east side — held by General Silveira with his 
Portuguese troops against the French under Loison, 
in 1809 — are as plain as if the houses had been set 
in flames aud the guns fired yesterday. 

The church of San Goncalo at Amarante, with 
its elaborate " flamboyant " facade, ornamented with 
life-size stone figures of the cinque-cento period, its 
red- tile covered " lantern," and western tower, is in- 
teresting as an architectural study, and as an example 
of how the great Christian style of architecture, 
falling with age into over ornamentation and over 
attention to elaboration of detail, and neglect of keep- 
ing, was sinking, in the end of the fifteenth century, 
into decadence ; and how a natural reaction against 
its exuberance grew into the chaster and tamer art 
of the cinque-cento. When these two styles again 
amalgamated into the so-called " plater es que " of 
the Peninsula ; when the architect cut and almost 
chased the stone of his buildings, in rivalry with the 
elaborate work of the goldsmith : when his leading 

9 



130 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

idea seemed to be to make a building a huge, 
ornamented stone casket, such as we see in 
many Peninsular churches — notably at Burgos and 
at Batalha — architecture seemed to have absolutely 
taken leave of its senses. A reaction was clearly 
required again ; and it took place, only too com- 
pletely, in what may be termed the Jesuit style of 
the seventeenth century, of which all travellers in 
Portugal meet such innumerable and such painful 
examples. Plain buildings, regular in outline ; the 
tall facade, with its belfry tower having shapeless 
pinnacles at the corners, often ending in flames cut in 
stone; the hideous sky-line, with its ugly, scroll-like 
curves ; the statues in their niches, in affected atti- 
tudes, and clothed in half- classical drapery floating 
to the winds ; the Rococo style of ornament, with all 
its false taste, and without any of the freedom and 
richness of the true Rococo. This style took root in 
about 1650, and, to the shame of Portuguese taste, 
it still prevails. 

I have thus briefly sketched the later develop- 
ment of church architecture, as we see it in Portu- 
gal. Its earlier progress is peculiar, as might be 
expected from the isolation of the kingdom, but is 
in more or less harmony with the great movement in 
the Christian building art throughout Northern and 
Western Europe. The ruthless destruction of fine 
old Gothic churches in the seventeenth and eighteenth 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 131 

centuries, under the influence of the Jesuits, and 
their replacement by the tasteless buildings of the 
order, have gone a long way to make Portugal a 
barren country for the ecclesiologist ; but in the 
poorer and more out-of-the-way districts, many in- 
teresting remains of Gothic architecture are still to 
be found. 

The first true Christian architecture in Portugal 
is a rude early Komanesque ; then the finer massive 
Romanesque contemporaneous with our own so-called 
Norman architecture, but extending to a later date ; 
following upon that, the various successive develop- 
ments of the pointed Gothic, borrowing a little in 
lightness and in ornamentation from the Saracen 
architecture; afterwards, the well-marked, elabo- 
rate Flamboyant, coincident with our own Perpendi- 
cular, mingling, as I have shown, in its decadence 
with the renaissance style imported from Italy in the 
sixteenth century, and growing into the mad luxuri- 
ance of the " Plateresque," which the ignorant and 
tasteless love, and the true artist himself can hardly 
forbear from lingering over half- admiringly. Then 
the death of all true art-feeling under the cankering 
influence of the gloomy Jesuits — an influence curi- 
ously coincident, in time and degree, with Puri- 
tanical influences in our own country. 

San Goncalo, the patron saint of Amarante, 



132 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

was a very respectable saint in the thirteenth cen- 
tury ; and is so far connected with Amarante and 
its river, that he is reputed to have charmed the 
fish out of the Tamega, to serve as food for the 
crowds of workmen whom he had assembled to 
build the bridge at Amarante. This excellent and 
benevolent saint is credited with being the patron of 
a certain class of persons of bad repute, natives of 
Amarante, who are said to resort to Oporto and 
other large towns, and there assume a more or less 
public character. I am happy to be able to be- 
lieve that both town and saint are libelled in this 
accusation. 

From Amarante over a barren country to the 
solitary wayside inn, at Casaes, where it is better to 
pass the night than to go further and fare worse ; 
from there the road brings the traveller to Penafiel, 
celebrated for its horse fair, and the abode of many 
families of gentle birth ; thence through a broad, 
well- wooded valley, to the hills of Baltar ; cutting, 
in one place, through a lode of copper ore, with 
which the road was actually metalled for nearly a 
hundred yards. A passing Englishman, struck by 
the green colour of the stones, picked up one, and 
found it heavy and ore-bearing. Straightway the 
Oporto Mining Company was formed; and some 
English and some Portuguese shareholders may 
remember that the company sank many shafts and 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 133 

much money in trying to come upon the vein of ore. 
It never was found, however, and the company is 
now wound up. I gob down to look at the remains 
of the works; the abandoned shafts are in an 
orchard close to the road on the north side, and 
enough of very unmetalliferous looking granite has 
been " brought to turf " to build a church. It seems 
incredible that the simple expedient of following the 
lode by an adit on the other side of the road, where 
it is still visible in a low bank, never appears to have 
occurred to any one. They dived for it, in fact, at 
great expense in a place where it might have been, 
but was not ; but they never thought of burrowing 
for it, and following it in a place where it actually 
lay before their eyes. What a sermon might a 
moralist not inflict on us upon this text ! 

There was a fair or market going on somewhere 
on the road, and I overtook several parties of sturdy 
farmers on horseback. Many of them carried long 
ox-goads in their hands ; and as the day was rainy, 
they wore the curious waterproof cloak, made of 
rushes, which is peculiar to this province of the 
Minho — a waterproof which has many advantages 
over the very best mackintosh coat ; being, in the 
the first place, much lighter ; in the second place it 
does not make the wearer hot or give him a head- 
ache, nor smell of tar ; in the third place, a good 



134 . TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

one costs less than a shilling. Its appearance, how- 
ever, is rather against it, and the wearer looks 
exactly as if he were thatched with straw from head 
to foot. These "palhogas" are extensively used by 
all conditions of persons, and enable labouring men 
to do field work on the rainiest days, when the 
water descends in tropical torrents, and when 
without some such protection, no out of door labour 
could be done. Like many other customs and 
institutions in this province, where the Roman 
colonists have left such numerous traces of their 
presence, the " palliOga" may perhaps be an inheri- 
tance from Eoman times, and may be the represen- 
tative of the Toga viminalis of the Romans — the toga 
made of twigs. 

It is difficult to look at these homely-looking men 
with this singular thatch upon them, bestriding 
their miserable little ponies, and to believe that both 
men and ponies are lineal descendants of the cavaliers 
and war horses who rode down the Saracens at 
Ourique, and the Spaniards on the field of Alju- 
barrota ; yet neither men nor ponies can be much 
changed since those days. The ponies have probably 
degenerated and dwindled to some extent ; but I see 
no reason why the men should have done so at all. 
The Christian cavalry who rode with King Alfonzo 
and King John were, for the most part, farmers and 
tillers of their own lands ; and so they have continued 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 135 

to this time. In the early days of the monarchy, a 
man — that is, a warrior, for the nation was composed 
of fighting men— who could keep a horse at his own 
cost ; who, without being of noble birth, was yet above 
the quality of the pedes, or rank and file of the infan- 
try, enjoyed certain privileges. The heavy "jugada" 
tax was i emitted in his case ; the tax that is levied 
on every man who could keep a yoke or " jugo" of 
oxen. If in addition to all this, he were deemed 
worthy, by his prowess or proved fidelity to receive 
the " conthia" or " maraveclis" — the Royal Bounty 
— he was entitled Cavalheiro de Espora dorada, a 
Knight of the Golden Spur ; and, we may presume, 
was privileged to wear a pair of them when he liked. 
The possession of the horse, however, was the main 
point ; and if the animal was not forthcoming at the 
periodical inquisition at harvest or vintage time, the 
"jugada" was levied.* 



* The morals, manners, and customs of these ancient times are 
so admirably and impartially exhibited in the old charters, without 
any of the pious exaggerations of the monkish chroniclers, or the 
rhetorical embellishments and political bias of later historians, that 
I make no apology for here and there citing a passage from them. 
There is certainly no pedantry in quoting dog-Latin, which a school 
girl could read as easily as French. The jugada above mentioned 
was less a tax than a quit rent paid for the land ; and tracts of 
country, as often as they were conquered from the Moors, were 
divided not among the great captains only, but parcelled out among 
the more prominent of the rank and file of the army. Those who so 
took land were to pay the king's tax on each yoke of oxen they kept, 
and were to be ready to "ride by the king's hand" in his yearly 



136 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

As to the horses, it is to be noticed that though 
they are small, seldom exceeding thirteen hands, 
they are moderately strong and active ; and it may 
be doubted if any Peninsular cavalry in the old time 
was ever horsed upon anything larger than a Gallo- 
way of fourteen hands. The indigenous horse of 
every unsettled country is undersized ; and the large 
cart-horses of England, and the heavy Flanders 
races are only the result of careful breeding during 
many generations, and rearing on abundant pas- 
turage. The horse brought by the Saracens was the 
Arab ; and the Arab is itself but a pouy. It might 
have been supposed that the taller, though less 
active horse of Barbary would have been imported, 
by a race of invaders coming from the very coast 
where the Barb is bred ; but this is certainly not the 
case. The high withers and other peculiarities in 
the shape of the Barb are traceable in his most 



forays. They were called "jugarios." The whole circumstances are 
set forth in a Royal Charter of 1123, and show with admirable clear- 
ness and brevity how the waste land about Yiseu was to be peopled 
with Christian warriors, and how a new and more stringent rule was 
made as to the non-remission of the tax, if the horse were not duly 
kept. " Completo anno si cavallum non habuerit, det sua jugada. 
Et illos jugarios qui venerint in meam terram veniant ad forum de 
jugada nova." " If the knight keeps no horse during the whole 
year, he must pay the jugada, and those jugarios who shall settle in 
my lands must come in on the new jugada tenure." It is noticeable 
how, in this twelfth-century Latin, cases are disregarded; the 
language, indeed, gradually sliding into modern Portuguese. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 137 

remote descendants. The Godolphin Arabian im- 
ported into England in the time of Charles II., was, 
in truth, not an Arabian but a Barbary horse ; and 
a close observer can, to this day, detect the Barb 
lineage in the quarters, back and withers of his 
descendants now upon the English turf. I have 
never seen the slightest trace of such descent in the 
horses of Portugal. So we may conclude that the 
Moors and Arabs brought nothing but the true Arab 
horse with them ; and with the greater confidence 
as it is all but certain that the Barbary horse was 
the product, in later times, of an intermixture 
between the true Arab and an indigenous horse of 
the Barbary coast. 

It is probable that, to the Christian possessors of 
the poor little hill ponies of Portugal, the advent of 
the Arab horse was a perfect revelation in the way 
of equine perfection. That warrior was a happy one 
who could slay^a Saracen and steal his horse. Such 
an animal was a gift " to set before a king." How 
much such a present was sometimes valued is shown 
by a Eoyal grant, in 1110, to one Bernardo Pranco, 
of certain houses in a town, curiously named Villa 
Boa de Satan, near Yiseu, which declares that the 
property shall be free of all Eoyal dues whatever : 
" quia de te unum bonum ca vallum accepimus quern 
" adduxisti de terra Maurorum," — " because you 
" gave me a fine horse which you brought out of the 



138 TRAVELS W PORTUGAL. 

" land of the Moors." The horse of Portugal, 
undersized as he is, still shows unmistakable traces of 
Arab lineage.* 

Coming on towards Oporto, we get among the 
hills of Yallongo, a metal-bearing land whose mineral 
wealth was extracted in ancient times, either by the 
Phoenicians, the Romans, or the Moors, for it is not 
settled which. The old shafts, galleries and drifts 
are found in great numbers among these mountains ; 
but it does not seem to be well established what ore 
was got at Yallongo. It is generally said to have 
been silver, which, however, the formation of the 
rock makes unlikely. Pieces of quartz with gold 
veins running through them, are sometimes picked 
up by the shepherds on these mountains and brought 
in for sale to the goldsmiths in Oporto ; and a brook 
in the neighbourhood contains, as I myself ascer- 
tained, minute particles of gold in its sands. The 
rock is precisely of that character where gold may 
be expected to be found in its original position ; i.e., 
in quartzose veins crossing altered palaeozoic slates, 
in the vicinity of eruptive rocks. It is probable 
therefore, that gold was the metal sought in the 

* The modem Portuguese, who know nothing of a horse but how 
to ride hhn on smooth ground, are beginning very injudiciously to 
use the Barb — attracted by his size and substance, to breed from ; 
the cross between this horse and the native mare is, as might be 
supposed, an ugly " weed," fit for nothing but the " manege." He 
can neither trot, gallop, jump, nor last. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 130 

mines on these hills ; and as gold mining could not 
be profitably undertaken without very cheap labour, 
and as no nation but the Romans had a strong 
enough hold on the country to compel the use either 
of " corvee" or slave labour, it is probable that the 
mines were Roman mines, perhaps continued by the 
Moors. . 

The only mine that was being worked at 
Vallongo when I passed, was an antimony mine in 
the hill side, close behind the church of Vallongo. 
I went to look at it, and found it a curiosity in its 
way. It is quite a toy mine. The lode runs into 
the hill at a spot where there is a pretty wooded dell, 
with a little cascade tumbling down its side. The 
miners were three in number — a man and two boys. 
A small adit, or tunnel, had been made u upon the 
lode ; ' ' that is, following its course into the hill. A 
man with a pickaxe, at the further end of this tunnel, 
dug out a little ore, and loaded a cart on four wheels, 
of the size and appearance of a child's go cart, which, 
when full, ran on wooden rails down the inclined 
plane of the tunnel till it reached the works outside, 
and then the boys unloaded it ; and while one of 
thern dressed the ore, the other dragged the empty 
cart back to the miner inside. Every now and then, 
the man in the tunnel got tired of his work, and 
came out to sit down on the heap of ore and smoke 
a cigarette. It was an innocent little mine, and I 



140 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

hardly suppose there is another conducted on such 
simple principles, in the whole world. 

There is no doubt that much profitable mining 
is still to be done in Portugal, though little has yet 
been accomplished. It is a curious fact that metal- 
seekers would seem hitherto to have done nothing 
but follow in the footsteps of the Eomans. A 
mining engineer has informed me that he knew of 
no existing Portuguese mine which had not, at 
one time, been worked by the Romans. That 
people, having no powerful' pumping engines, were 
obliged to abandon mines, however remunera- 
tive they might be proving, where the water 
could gain access to the works in any quantity. 
This gentleman told me that in a mine which he 
was superintending, the workmen broke into an 
old flooded gallery ; and when the water had been 
pumped out, the ancient timber supports were 
found to be still sound, and the men picked up 
tool handles of obsolete forms, and Eoman lamps 
made of pottery. 

Nine miles, through a picturesque, hilly and 
highly cultivated country, brings the traveller to 
Oporto. On his way he is pretty sure to encounter 
long strings of mules, bearing flour to Vallongo; 
the same animals having carried, in the morning, 
the city's daily supply of wheaten bread. Almost 
all the bread used in Oporto is baked at Vallongo, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 141 

and brought in every day on mule-back. This 
singular and, at first sight, uneconomical proceed- 
ing has prevailed at least since the days of King 
Emmanuel, in 1500, and probably long before then ; 
and the explanation of the fact, that bread can be 
profitably made nine miles from where it is eaten, is 
that the ovens at Vallongo can be cheaply heated 
with the brushwood which grows abundantly on the 
wooded hills round that town. 

Oporto is a granite-built town of over a hundred 
thousand inhabitants. Ifc should be entered from 
the south, or by the river ; for then its picturesque 
situation on precipitous cliffs, rising from the 
river's edge, can be seen to most advantage. It is 
a city of many fountains, and many green and 
flourishing gardens ; but, considering its size, im- 
portance and great antiquity, it has little in it to 
attract the traveller. It need scarcely be remarked 
that the right name of the city is " Porto," the port 
or harbour, "0" being nothing but the definite 
article prefixed. We are, I believe, the only Euro- 
pean nation who do not call the town " Porto." 
It lies on the north side of the river ; on the 
south is the suburb of Gaya, which is even more 
ancient than Oporto. A strong castle called Calla 
or Cale, stood in ancient days on the chief height 
of Gaya, and Gaya may boast of bestowing its 
name upon all Portugal — Portus Gale, the Port of 



142 TRAVELS IN POETUGAL. 

Cale, was the name first given to the surrounding 
district, and in time to the whole kingdom. 

Oporto somewhat forgetfully calls itself Invicta 
Givitas, the unconquered city, but it has been taken 
more than once. It was captured in a very 
memorable manner, in 1809 ; and it may safely 
be asserted that neither Goth, Moor, nor Spaniard 
did the city so much harm, or caused so terrible 
a carnage of inoffensive inhabitants as did Marshal 
Soult and his French troops on that occasion. The 
Portuguese have rather a short historical memory 
— I have seen the Peninsular War alluded to in an 
inscription on a public monument in Lisbon, as the 
occasion on which the Portuguese (with their allies) 
drove the French out of Portugal! — but I doubt if the 
nation will ever forget the awful massacre of their 
ancestors by the French soldiery, in the streets of 
Oporto. 

It proved itself, however, an Invicta Givitas to 
Dom Miguel, in 1832, suffering on that occasion a 
siege of eleven months' duration — a siege which 
may almost be said to have been conducted on 
peace principles, so small was the effusion of blood, 
and so apparently slight the desire of either side 
to injure the other. Perhaps all past history does 
not afford the record of so long a siege conducted 
with so little energy or enterprise on either side, 
where so little military science was displayed, or 



TRAVELS IK PORTUGAL. U2 

where the crowded inhabitants of a large town were 
subjected to so few privations. The true explana- 
tion of this is, of course, to be sought in political 
causes, not in any degree in the character of the 
combatants. Dom Pedro was a brave man, and his 
brother, Dom Miguel, brave to the verge of impru- 
dence. The contending armies were almost entirely 
composed of Portuguese; and no finer soldiers 
exist. At the siege of Oporto, both parties were 
playing a waiting game. However, the fate of 
arbitrary rule resting on priestly influences was 
decided by the event; and the government of the 
Liberals established by the energetic Dom Pedro 
has lasted to this day, and it is to be hoped, and 
indeed to be expected, that it will endure. 

The Liberal Government which now happily 
prevails in Portugal works, on the whole, mar- 
vellously well, considering the long generations of 
corrupt and iniquitous rule which had preceded it. 
Notwithstanding the good sense of the Portuguese 
people, which has taught them to appreciate a 
representative Government and free institutions, 
the Liberal party and Liberal proposals were at first 
by no means welcomed in Portugal. The present 
constitutional Government of Portugal, was, in fact, 
established by a species of " coup oVetat" though 
Liberals here or elsewhere would probably be slow 
to admit it. Liberalism was, for a time, the cause 



144 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

of town against country — Lisbon and Oporto 
against the whole kingdom ; indeed, for a time, it 
was Oporto alone against all Portugal, and Lisbon 
neutral. A vast majority of the people, all the 
priests' party, all the peasantry, and most of the 
smaller towns, were in favour of Dom Miguel. 
When Dom Pedro landed with ten thousand raw 
troops, to fight for his daughter's succession and the 
cause of freedom, his occupation of Oporto, and his 
proposed defence of the city against the forces of 
his brother, seemed, to all who did not know the 
imbecility of Dom Miguel and his captains, to be 
the proposal of a madman. The Pedroites won the 
day at last, and placed Donna Maria Segunda on the 
throne of Portugal ; not through any special activity 
or wisdom of their own, but from the surprising folly 
of their opponents. 

Oporto is, and ever has been, the focus of all 
revolution — the centre whence all change and move- 
ment, whether political or commercial, has ex- 
tended through the kingdom. Surrounded by the 
most fertile provinces of Portugal — situated on a 
river more or less navigable, the chief port of ship- 
ment for the two most important staples of Portu- 
guese production, port wine and cattle, and possess- 
ing inhabitants more enterprising and enlightened 
than those of other parts of the kingdom — Oporto 
has become an important commercial and political 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 145 

centre. Its commercial importance would be still 
greater but for the dangerous bar at the mouth of 
the Douro, over which vessels of more than five or 
six hundred tons cannot pass. The channel across 
the bar varies almost monthly, as the sands, 
brought down by the river, shift with changing 
winds and varying currents ; and the bar is, or is 
ordered to be — for there is a difference — sounded 
and examined daily. It would scarcely be believed 
that, in a professedly civilized country, such a shift- 
ing channel as this, and so short a one (for the 
dangerous portion of it does not exceed two hundred 
yards in length), should not be marked out by 
buoys or beacons. The Portuguese are, in truth, 
no less than fourteen centuries behindhand in this 
matter ; for an ancient Roman stone beacon was 
fished up not long ago, which had evidently served 
to mark a certain sunken rock,- which still exists, 
and has made acquaintance with many a ship's 
bottom since this old Eoman monument, inscribed 
<( Navigantium Salutis Causa " — fell from its place. 



10 



CHAPTER VII. 

Foz, the Brighton of Oporto — Sea Bathing — Douro Boats— The Por- 
tuguese a Trafficking People, but not Commercially Adventurous — 
Churches of Oporto — Remarkable Historical Picture — The Douro, 
Passage of,inlS12 — Curious Reputation of the Douro in Spain — 
Fish and Fishing in the River — Ethnology of Portugal — Variety 
of Races — Appearance of the People — Gold Ornaments of Moorish 
Design — Railway to Lisbon — Places on the Way—Marsh Scenery 
— Coimbra — Erroneous Tradition about Inez de Castro — Univer- 
sity of Coimbra ; its Connection with George Buchanan — Pombal 
— Marquis of Pombal the Bismarck of Portugal — His Life and 
Character — Alcobaca — Batalha, the Battle Abbey of Portugal- 
Its Plateresgue Style of Architecture — " Tanias El Rey," mean- 
ing of — Objection to " Interviewing " Respectable People, and 
Reporting their Conversation — Conversation of Chance Acquain- 
tances very Poor — An Instance. 

The entrance to Oporto by sea is very fine. The 
city, with its wharves and anchorage, lies three miles 
from the river's month, and the traveller who has 
crossed the bar exchanges, in a moment, the always 
unquiet waves of the Atlantic for the smooth water 
of the Douro, which here forms an estuary, in which 
are reflected the steep pine- covered hills beneath 
which it winds its course. At the mouth of the river 
is the little fishing village and watering-place of San 
Joao da Foz — the Brighton of Oporto — with its 
quaint red, green, and yellow houses, making pretty 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 147 

groups with the trees of the quintas, or gardens, 
the grey towers of its two or three churches, and 
the old granite-built castle, with its battlements and 
projecting bartizans. A road shaded by plane trees 
runs from the castle, between the river and the tall 
cliffs, to the city ; and along this road, in the early 
morning of any summer or autumn day, may be seen 
crowds of men, women, and children, on horseback, 
mule-back, or donkey-back, in public caleches or in 
the tram-way carriages, going to and coming from 
their sea bath. 

The Portuguese have great faith in sea bathing, 
and few persons take less than twenty or thirty baths 
in the year. It is thought that the earlier in the 
day and the later in the year a bath is taken, the 
more efficacious it is. The bathers, men and women, 
wear a fairly decent costume of blue or red serge. 
Hundreds of small square wooden frames, covered 
with canvas, are put up on the sands, in the bathing 
season, for dressing in ; and these form a perfect 
little town, with streets and cross streets, in which 
it is quite easy to lose one's way. Often an unfor- 
tunate bather is seen coming out of the sea with 
dripping and clinging and waterlogged garments, his 
face and hands blue with cold, and looking in vain 
for his own dressing-house in a crowd of others 
exactly like it. 

Soon after sunrise the bathers begin to arrive, 



148 • TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

and before seven there is a very gay and noisy as- 
sembly on the sands. Flags of all colours flying 
over the canvas town, donkey boys vociferating to 
their customers, stout bathing men and women going 
about, wet from head to foot, and with the radiant 
expression peculiar to their tribe, young ladies in 
pretty and fantastic bathing dresses, with their black 
hair flying to the winds, children in red and blue 
hoods, bands playing, and the shouting, talking, 
laughing, and splashing of water, going on all at 
once, make up a lively and amusing scene. 

We come back to Oporto along the river side 
road to where the ships and steamers are moored, 
and boats of every sort dart about the river — of 
every sort but steam-boats, of which there are none 
except the ocean steamers from ports in Great 
Britain. There are large, broad-beamed, sea-going 
fishing boats, with the pious legend, " Dens nos 
guarde" " God keep us," painted in vermilion on the 
sides, open boats with a huge, single lateen sail, fast 
sailers on and off a wind, and among the finest models 
in the world for getting through rough water. There 
is the " Caique" in spite of its pure Arabic name, 
nothing but a single- sculling dingy ; the canoa, or 
" dug out," made from a single tree; the " Tolde " 
boat, which is a clumsy imitation of a gondola ; the 
Big a and Saveira, which are narrow boats, with bows 
and stern peaked up to a point several feet above the 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 149 

water, and quaintly painted in bright patterns. These 
last boats are only used by the river fishermen near 
the sea, and are unquestionably of Oriental form and 
origin : the people who use them are a race differing 
in dress, size, features, and manners from other 
Portuguese, and may, perhaps, be of Greek — possibly 
of Phoenician — origin. Then there are the flat-bot- 
tomed wine boats, carrying a cargo of from twenty 
to eighty pipes of port, from the port wine country, 
sixty miles up the river, with their enormous square 
sails and powerful oar-shaped rudders, thirty or 
forty feet long, hung on an upright pintle or pivot, 
and worked, in the rapids and sharp turns of the 
river, by three or four men. A few strokes of this 
great oar-rudder bring the boat completely round. 
Then, again, there are the passenger boats, mostly 
rowed by women, which carry crowds of working 
men from and to their homes every morning and 
evening. The rowing in Portugal is mostly done 
standing, with the face towards the bows, as in Italy 
and the East ; and the art of rowing sitting has only 
been acquired at sea-ports from foreign sailors. 

All this life and movement on the river is, how- 
• ever, the movement of social activity only ; of brisk 
commercial activity there is very little sign. Yet 
there is far more trading energy and movement 
among the Portonians, as they of Oporto style 
themselves, than among any other population in 



150 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Portugal. What trade there is is divided between 
Great Britain and Brazil — we having the lion's share. 
The Portuguese, in truth, have never been greatly 
successful as traders. Their magnificent foreign con- 
quests and discoveries nevei resulted in prosperous 
commercial relations with far-off countries. They 
went forth, a noble band, in their great poet's words, 
" dilatando a fe, o imperio," to spread their religion 
and their dominion, but not to extend their com- 
merce. The great wealth they undoubtedly did 
acquire was, I am afraid, far more often wrung 
painfully from a conquered people by the exactions 
of the tax-gatherer, derived from the forced labour 
of hard-driven slaves, or extorted in the shape of 
bribes from the pockets of the wealthy, than acquired 
by any sort of legitimate commerce. The Portuguese 
are not born traders ; they are sharp enough as 
traffickers in a small, peddling way; they delight 
in bargaining and haggling ; and even a prosperous 
man will spend hours over a bargain on which an 
amount of five shillings shall depend; but they 
wholly lack the boldness and the spirit of adventure 
which distinguish the merchant from the tradesman. 
I have heard, more than once, of negotiations be- 
tween a Portuguese and an Englishman having lasted 
for days ; the Portuguese actually wanting spirit to 
close, though to do so would be to his clear advan- 
tage, and hoping that some trifle more would be 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 151 

conceded to him, till at last the foreigner would 
lose patience, and break off negotiations altogether. 

Oporto possesses little of artistic or antiquarian 
interest. The spacious Cathedral is of early pointed 
Gothic — that is, it would have been if it had been 
left alone ; but it has been modernized and improved 
out of all true Christian shape and appearance. The 
cloisters retain most of the ancient work, but even 
there the "restorer" has been at his destructive 
task. An immense solid silver altar, of late Renais- 
sance work, is spoken of with great admiration by 
the Portuguese ; an admiration excited by its size, 
rather than by any artistic merit it possesses. The 
work, however, is decidedly good for the period. 

Of other churches, that of San Francisco is a fine 
building, singularly incrusted inside with vulgar gilt 
wood carving of the last century, of a bad " rococo " 
•character. This is a style of ornament which the 
monks themselves manufactured ; and many an in- 
teresting church has every square foot of its interior 
hidden under the hideous mask. The Church of San 
Francisco is one of the few Gothic edifices in Portu- 
gal which an English ecclesiological writer has de- 
scribed. Judging from an experience of English or 
French church architecture, he is inclined to place the 
-date of this building at about 1280 ; it was, however, 
built by King John I., in 1404, and a careful ex- 
amination of details in the work will show that it is 



152 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

many years later than the great monastic church at 
Leca do Balio, and this, we know for certain, was 
built in 1330 — 36. The fact is that the progress of 
mediaeval church architecture in Portugal did not at 
all keep pace with its movement elsewhere; and 
the most experienced ecclesiologist is sure to make 
such blunders on a first inspection of Portuguese 
buildings. 

A small church near the Eua de Cedofeita is re- 
puted to be the oldest in Portugal. It is asserted to 
be a building dating from the time of the Goths ; a 
claim to antiquity not supported by a single stone in its 
structure. It is a plain and very ugly building, with 
many restorations and additions, and is misleading to 
an ignorant or casual inspector of it, because the 
original round Romanesque arches have, in several 
cases, been converted by the chisel of the mason into 
pointed arches — of course, surbasecl and unshapely. 
The Romanesque capitals and mouldings are evidence 
enough that the pointed form has been given at a later 
date. 

There is a collection of very poor pictures, by 
native artists, in the Academy, and a number of still 
poorer works in the Town Hall. In the offices of 
the great Misericordia Hospital, founded by King 
Emmanuel in about 1510, are preserved the por- 
traits of all the benefactors of the institution since 
that period, including several kings, bishops, and 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 153 

officers of high rank in state and army. Such an 
array of horrible daubs it was never before — and I 
hope never will be again — my fate to contemplate. 
This collection, which is representative of the art of 
painting in Portugal, should suffice to explode the 
utterly untenable theory of the existence, at any 
period, of a great Portuguese School of Painting. 
There are, however, two exceptions to the level bad- 
ness of these execrable productions, amounting to 
two or three hundred in number ; one, an admirable 
portrait of a monk, by the so-called Portuguese 
painter, Glamma, who died at the end of the 
eighteenth century, — a work of merit enough to 
found a reputation upon. Glamma, however, was 
only a Portuguese by the mother's side ; his father 
was an Italian. 

The other exception is a large panel painting of 
the highest value, by a Flemish artist, of the school 
of Van Eyck, representing the founder, King 
Emmanuel, with his Queen and the youthful Princes 
and Princesses, kneeling in adoration before a cru- 
cifix whereon our Saviour is nailed. Above, on one 
side, is the figure of St. John, opposite to a fine 
draped figure of Our Lady. The Portuguese ascribe 
this picture, as they ascribe almost every ancient 
painting, to the mythical Gran Vasco, a Portuguese 
painter who is believed to have flourished in the 
sixteenth century. In the background is a beauti- 



154 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL 

ful landscape, soft and tender in tone, in which 
snndry details and incidents are depicted which 
sufficiently prove the Flemish origin of the picture — 
a Gothic church-tower of a purely northern type of 
architecture — a man using the peculiar Walloon 
plough, with a pair of heavy, grey Flanders horses 
— a flock of geese feeding in a meadow ; another of 
sheep. All this, together with the existence of a 
painter's monogram, and the northern type of all 
the faces, enables us to ascribe the work, with 
absolute certainty, to a Flemish artist. The picture 
contains some important historical portraits : besides 
the King himself, there is his third wife, Queen 
Eleanor, daughter of King Philip of Castile; Dom 
Joao, afterwards King John III., the most pros- 
perous sovereign of Portugal, appears as a boy of 
sixteen; Donna Isabel, who was married to the 
Emperor Charles V., is here a girl of fifteen ; Prince 
Alfonzo is represented as a boy of ten or eleven. 
On the floor behind the kneeling fiorire is his 
cardinal's hat ; he was made a cardinal at nine 
years of age, and as he was born in 1509, the date of 
the picture is clearly indicated as being either 1519 
or 1520. Next to him is Prince Henry, who was 
also made a cardinal, and became king in the last 
few months of his life, and with whom perished the 
famous House of Burgundy, and the greatness and 
independence of Portugal. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 155 

The Douro, at Oporto, breaks through a range of 
granite hills, and flows through the gorge thus 
formed in a somewhat narrowed stream, with great 
depth and force of current. On the highest point 
of the precipitous, rocky bank on the right side of 
the river, are the battlemented walls and towers of 
the Santa Clara Nunnery ; and crowning a corres- 
ponding and loftier eminence across the river are 
the circular church and conventual buildings of the 
Cruzios Monks. 

This lofty and precipitous hill, known as the 
" Serra," commands Oporto ; and the city probably 
owed its safety, in the long siege of 1832, to the fact 
of these heights being held by a portion of the 
garrison. Here it was that the chief part of the 
fighting was done during that famous leaguer. The 
unstopped shot-holes in the walls of the church are 
as good a record of the fact as the very poor and 
scanty chronicles we have of this siege — which as a 
military event, was perhaps more memorable and 
decisive of the fate of Portugal than any event since 
the great battle of Alcacer Quibir, fatal to the 
flower of Portuguese chivalry and to the indepen- 
dence of the kingdom ; for the successful resistance 
of Oporto in 1832 broke the strength of the Abso- 
lutist usurper, Miguel, and laid the foundations of 
the strong Constitutional Government which has 
ever since prevailed. 



156 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

If the traveller walks some two hundred yards 
along the crest of the hill on which the Serra Con- 
vent stands, he will come to a rocky hillock ; and 
ascending this, he will have, spread out like a map 
beneath him, the scene of one of the boldest and 
most skilful feats of arms that ever was accom- 
plished in modern war. Beneath him, at the 
bottom of some five hundred feet of precipitous 
rock, rolls the Douro — at this spot a deep and tur- 
bulent stream. A similar steep and craggy bank 
opposite to him is crowned by a huge, square, 
granite building, known as the " Seminario." Up 
stream from where he stands, the banks cease to 
be rocky or precipitous, and the river flows in a 
broad and gentle stream through rich meadows, 
and. by the walls of country houses and villages. 

It was on this hillock that Wellington stood, on 
the morning of the 12th of May, 1809. Soult was 
in full occupation of the north bank, and of the 
city opposite ; he had destroyed the bridge of boats 
across the river ; his troops had scoured both banks 
for miles, and had seized every boat that was to be 
found. Having so taken these various precautions, 
being in great force in a strong position, with an 
unfordable river between himself and the enemy, 
Soult considered — and according to all the rules of 
war, justly considered — his position to be unassail- 
able. 



TRAVELS ffl PORTUGAL. 157 

The problem for Wellington was, with raw 
troops of which he had just taken command, 
to cross the river and to dispossess Soult. 
"Alexander the Great himself," says Napier, 
" might have turned from the undertaking without 
shame." 

Wellington, having taken command of the British 
army but eighteen days before arriving at Oporto, 
had halted at Coimbra, several days' march to the 
south of the Douro ; and dividing his troops, 
operated against the French by two roads — one over 
the mountains towards the river, on the north bank 
of which the French were in force ; and the other 
by the sea, in the direct line to Oporto. Of this 
latter small army of 14,000 men, Wellington himself 
took command. The French had been encountered, 
and had made a stand among the woods near the 
ancient Monastery of Grijo, nine miles south of 
Oporto ; but they were driven into the city, and, 
after crossing by it, they destroyed the bridge of 
boats. 

Wellington arrived on the south side of the 
river at eight o'clock on the morning of the 12th. 
From the hillock I have mentioned he took in the 
whole position ; he saw that if he could once get a 
few resolute men into the " Seminario," on the 
opposite bank, it could be held until his troops had 
crossed. He sent General Murray three miles up 



158 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

the river with the German Brigade and some 
squadrons of the 19th Dragoons, to search for 
boats ; and he meanwhile caused twenty pieces of 
artillery to be dragged up the steep sides of the 
Serra. The troops were still concealed by this hill 
from the French garrison. In the meantime, a soli- 
tary boat had been obtained ; for a poor barber of 
Oporto had in the night run the gauntlet of the 
French patrols, and come over the water in a small 
skiff. In this, one or two English officers and a 
Portuguese priest embarked, and crossing the river, 
returned unperceived with three or four barges. 
The British troops had crept up to the river's 
brink ; and as the first boat touched the shore, an 
officer and twenty-five soldiers of the Buffs crowded 
into it, and in ten minutes were on the French side 
of the Douro. Others followed ; the " Semi- 
nario," was gained. Then, suddenly, the alarm was 
sounded in the French quarters, the drums beat to 
arms, and masses of the enemy hurried up from all 
sides, and poured furiously upon the " Seminario. ,> 
The citizens were seen at the windows of their 
houses, gesticulating and making signals to their 
coram 2; deliverers. 

The attack upon the small party of British was 
fierce, and the defence stubborn. The English 
leader was shot down. The French artillery began 
to play upon the building; but the British guns 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 159 

upon the Serra commanded the position, and their 
fire swept one approach to it. The French, how- 
ever, could double their numbers every minute : 
they threatened to overpower the holders of the 
building. Murray, with his Germans, moreover^ 
failed to come up, though he had already crossed 
the river. The moment was critical. Wellington 
himself would have crossed, but for the entreaties of 
those about him, and his confidence in the troops 
engaged. Some of the townsmen now pushed 
across the river in several great boats, and part of 
General Sherbrook's division was able to get over and 
to enter the city itself. The French began their 
retreat. Their columns, travelling towards the east, 
had to pass by the enclosure of the " Seminario," 
and our men poured a destructive musketry fire as 
they passed. Volleys from Sherbrook's people 
reached the retreating columns ; guns were aban- 
doned, and hundreds of Frenchmen fell. The 
passage was won ; the town was taken ; the French 
were in full retreat; and had Murray, with his 
Germans, but struck a single blow, the discomfiture 
of Soult's army would have been complete. Placed 
on the road of the retreating French army with the 
object of intercepting them, he let column after 
column pass him. "It was an opportunity," says 
Napier, forcibly, " that would have tempted a blind 
man to strike." 



160 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

The Douro is a niighty river — rich in the 
crowded warehouses along its quays, rich in mer- 
chantmen which float on its waters, rich in brave 
deeds done on its banks, and, what perhaps is more 
to the purpose of the dwellers along its shores, rich 
in all manner of fish for food. The very water of 
the Douro is said by Spaniards to be fattening : 
Ci agua de Douro, caldo de pollas," as strong as 
chicken broth, say the people of Leon, where the 
river takes its rise. This high opinion of it does 
not reach so low down as Oporto. The Douro 
water, as it flows through Portugal, is, except in 
flood time, as clear as crystal ; yet there would 
seem to be some foundation for the belief in its 
virtue, for nowhere have I seen such draughts of 
fishes as are brought ashore in the drag-nets of the 
fishermen. It is certainly, as a monkish author says 
of it, "flumen piscosum" — a fish-abounding stream. 
The sturgeon runs up from the sea, but is seldom 
caught or even seen, except in the upper and 
shallower part of the river. The lamprey migrates 
from the sea in great numbers, and, creeping up eel- 
like by the dead waters near the banks, is caught in 
fixed nets wherever there is an eddy or backwater, 
formed by a projection of rock from the bank. The 
Allis shad, which the English at Oporto call the 
white salmon, enters the Douro, and is caught 
in trammels and in pocket nets — donlcey nets they 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 161 

are called in Wales. Eights to the exclusive fishing 
of certain spots in the river favoured by these two 
fish have been established, probably from the time 
of the Visigoths. In 1255, the King of Portugal 
possessed " vargas" or fish-traps made of reeds and 
willows, at a place called Furada, opposite Oporto, 
and also at Aremho, a little above the city ; and he 
conceded to the people of the burgh of Gaya the 
privilege of taking shads and lampreys from these 
royal fish-traps.'* Both Furada and Aremho, are 
still noted resorts of these fish. 

If a traveller wishes to satisfy himself how far 
the reputation which some writers have conferred 
upon the Portuguese, of being the plainest and most 
homely-featured people in Europe, is justified by 
facts, let him, on any Tuesday or Saturday morning 
(market days), rise before eight o'clock and mix 
with the crowds of peasant men and women from 
the neighbourhood which, on these days, fill the 
streets from sunrise. He will find well-featured,, 
stalwart men, and smartly dressed women, in their 
various local costumes ; almost all the women wear- 
ing the white shirt and tight bodice which is so uni- 
versal in the female dress of the dark-complexioned 
races of the south of Europe. Nearly every woman 
wears more or fewer of the beautiful filagree gold 

* " Item mando quod pescatores de mea villa de Gaja pesquent; 
in meis varguis de Furada et de Areinio." 

11 



162 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

ornaments, still made upon the old Moorish patterns. 
The traveller will almost immediately arrive at the 
conclusion that these northern Portuguese, at least, 
have no claim to superiority of ugliness. Fine, deep- 
chested women with magnificent eyes, often show- 
ing the almond shape, and possessing the straight 
level eyebrow of the Moorish race, white and 
regular teeth, thick hair growing low down on the 
brow, the frons tenuis of Horace, a complexion 
generally transparent, with rich tones of colour ; 
women with a good upright carriage of the body ; 
acquired perhaps from the habit of carrying burdens 
on the head ; firm and graceful in their walk, like 
women all over the Peninsula. Altogether a very 
high type of human being, more like the peasant 
women of Albano, whence the Roman artists get 
their best models, than those of any country I 
know; and, like them, it is noteworthy that the 
men, though fairly good looking, are not, either in 
features, in form, or in stature, proportionate to the 
women. The complexion of the northern Portu- 
guese is mostly dark, and the hair black ; but every 
now and then, among the peasants, one sees a man 
or a woman with hair and skin so light, that their 
owner would pass for a fair person in Germany or 
in England. These fair-haired individuals will 
generally be found to come from some of the moun- 
tain villages. 



TRAVELS IN. PORTUGAL. 163 

The truth is, that the reports of travellers as to 
Portuguese good looks are made, as a rule, from 
Lisbon ; and of the middle and lower classes of 
Lisbon and its neighbourhood, little cau be said hi 
praise. Sallow and muddy complexions, sinister ex- 
pressions, irregular features, ill-knit frames, and no 
approach to smartness in dress, make the people of 
southern and central Portugal appear to belong to a 
different race from those of the north. 

The question as to the races of men which go 
to make up the Portuguese nation is an interesting 
one. Those who assert, as, I believe, it is commonly 
asserted, that the race has now become a perfectly 
homogeneous one — that is, a number of elements 
blended into a single nation, more or less identical 
throughout the country — assert that which is at 
complete variance with my own observation. The 
original constituents of Portuguese nationality are 
more numerous than those even of our own country. 
If the reader will allow me to steer clear* of contro- 
versial points, and spare me a reference to authorities, 
I will state, in a few sentences, what is held by the 
more rational of Portuguese ethnologists on the 
subject. 

It is generally supposed that the aboriginal in- 
habitants were of Celtic race ; that the country was 
overrun by the Iberi, who probably came from the 
banks of the Rhone ; and that a more or less com- 



164 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

plete immixture of these two peoples had taken 
place, resulting in a race known as the Celtiberians, 
at the time that the Romans first conquered and then 
colonized the country ; that the Visigoths in their 
turn invaded Portugal and overthrowing Eoman 
institutions, substituted their own laws and some of 
their customs. The Visigoths were themselves 
overmastered and their institutions subverted by the 
Arab races in the eighth century ; and these Eastern 
conquerors spread over nearly the whole face of the 
land, and imposed their customs, their laws, their 
civilization, and everything but their religion, upon 
a people whom they ruled for four centuries ; that 
finally the hybrid Gothic and Celtiberian races from 
the inaccessible mountain ranges of the Asturias y 
who had never been utterly subjugated by the Sara- 
cens, poured down from their mountain holds, and 
slowly retook the whole land from the Mussulmans. 
The enthusiastic ethnologist may believe as much 
more than this as he chooses ; but the most sceptical 
must admit so much. He must accept the Celts, 
the Iberians, the Romans, the Visigoths, and the 
Saracens, as denominators in the compound fraction 
which makes up the Portuguese nation ; and besides 
these, he must take account of Greek colonies, of 
which we have absolute indications, if no proof; 
of Carthaginian conquests, of Phoenician immigra- 
tion, for which, likewise, there is something to 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 165 

allege : of Frenchmen brought over in the train of 
Count Henry, the first prince of the royal line of 
Portugal; of Jews, who have long settled in the 
country. That all these elements combine, iu 
greater or smaller proportions, to constitute the 
nation, is more or less demonstrable. 

I have spared the reader much in not developing 
the views which the ingenuity of native ethno- 
logists has brought to bear upon the origin of their 
countrymen. One industrious author will positively 
have it that Nebuchadnezzar in person visited Por- 
tugal, and left many of his countrymen behind him : 
his folio volume, however, is not sufficient to bring 
the matter home to the belief of unlearned readers. 
I have likewise spared him an enumeration of the 
various races, from the Arab of Yemen to the Berber 
of Mount Atlas, which were rolled together by the 
tide of Mahometan conquest, and which go to make 
up the so-called Moors of the Peninsula. 

Now of course the question is, in what propor- 
tion these constituents of the nation are combined — 
how much of a Eoman or a Goth, of a Moor or a 
Celt, goes to make a modern Portuguese ? It is 
clear that neither science nor history can help us 
much here, for all that we find in all the historians 
put together are scattered notices, which, if collected, 
would not fill two of these pages. Common sense 
and common observation may lead us a little way. 



166 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

My own impression is, that the history of an ancient 
race is often better written on their faces than in 
the pages of any book. If I find myself in a village 
of fishermen whose stature .is lower than that of 
their neighbours; whose features have an entirely 
different cast from those of ordinary Portuguese; 
whose intonation is peculiar ; who do not inter- 
marry with their neighbours ; whose boats are of 
different build — a build still found in the Levant; 
whose dress — the short kilt-like linen trousers of 
Eastern nations, the coloured waist-belt, and the 
long, brown cloth gaberdine — is a costume wholly 
dissimilar to anything in the country ; — if I find 
these men at several places on the coast, notably at 
Oporto and Aveiro, where there are broad rivers or 
estuaries, if I find them always preserving their 
identity, always devoting themselves to the fishing of 
rivers, creeks, and tideways, and leaving the open 
sea fishing to the hardier Portuguese, I come 
guardedly to the conclusion that these men are the 
descendants of some very ancient colony of Eastern 
origin ; and my belief fits in very comfortably with 
the established theory of a Phoenician immigration. 

Again, if the whole population of a hill village 
turn out, as I ride into it, and I see that nine out of 
ten are brown haired and grey eyed, and some of the 
children and girls positively flaxen haired, I refuse 
to believe but that this village has some stronger 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 1C7 

infusion of Northern blood than the people dwelling 
on the plains. If I find other communities of purely 
dark haired, gipsy-looking people, with the slim 
figures, rounded features, long eyes, full lips, and 
soft olive complexion of the African Moor, I believe 
they have more African blood than any other. 
Again, there are whole towns where the people have 
faces so Jewish in type, that a man had need to be an 
ethnologist with an original theory to endeavour to 
prove it anything else. 

Thus a man may go through the country harm- 
lessly theorizing, and probably, if his observation 
be moderately acute, and his enthusiasm not too 
great, he will form juster ideas of the nationality of 
the Portuguese than if he had read many heavy 
folios on the subject. 

I have already mentioned the profusion of gold 
filagree ornaments worn by the Portuguese peasant 
women. They are manufactured almost exclusively 
at Oporto ; and one street, or rather one side of one 
street, is occupied by the goldsmiths who sell them. 
The actual workers are men in whose families the 
trade has been handed down from father to son — 
perhaps from the time of the Moors, for the designs 
on the ornaments are hardly changed since their 
time ; and it is interesting to see the crescent and 
the star of Islam traced upon an ornament in the 



168 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

shape of the Christian cross of Malta. These same 
shops sometimes contain silver plate of the rare 
Portuguese repousse work of the sixteenth century ; 
and, still oftener, gems which are to be obtained for 
far less than their price in London or Paris. The 
Brazilian topaz is cut by Portuguese lapidaries, and 
is to be found often of good size. Amethysts were, 
I am told, procurable in Oporto, some time ago, of 
fabulous size and moderate price ; but their growing 
value in the London and Paris markets in time 
reached this outskirt of civilization, and the day of 
bargains is gone by. 

I have seen in these goldsmiths' shops several of 
the beautiful so-called Bishop rings, set generally with 
a single amethyst, chrysolite, or opal ; and as such 
rings are intended to be worn on the forefinger, the 
stone set in them is usually large. The true opal, 
I am told, bore in Oporto, a few years ago, little 
more value than the common milk opal or the ame- 
thyst ; and a stone the size of a man's thumb-nail 
might have been bought for a few pounds. Such a 
stone, if a good one, would, it is needless to say, be 
worth more than a hundred pounds. The absolute 
ignorance which, in these former happy days, seems 
to have prevailed on the subject, may be gauged by a 
fact that was related to me : A goldsmith had one to 
sell, and found an intending purchaser, who, how- 
ever, did not conclude the bargain, because he feared, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 169 

from the play and fire in the stone, that it was a ficti- 
tious one ! The story will seem rather pointless to 
the general reader, but for the lapidary or mineralo- 
gist it will, I am certain, possess an exquisite humour ; 
the point of it being that the opal is absolutely in- 
imitable — the only gem indeed that is so, and there- 
fore the one of all others that the German, Lessing, 
should have abstained from choosing for the 
apologue in his "Nathan the Wise" which turns 
upon the imitation of an opal. 

To go from Oporto to Lisbon by railway takes 
twelve hours. The journey should not occupy more 
than half the time, but even this rate of speed is an 
improvement upon old times. A certain Richard 
Twiss, an English traveller in Portugal, exactly a 
hundred years ago, having arrived at Lisbon, says : 
" I hired a chase drawn by a pair of mules, and 
agreed with the driver that he should drag me to 
Oporto in nine days." 

The railroad, on leaving Oporto, skirts the sea- 
shore and passes Granja, the resort of a few sea-side 
visitors in summer. The Portuguese have a singular 
taste in the matter of sea-bathing, and prefer a crowd 
and a good, shelving, sandy beach, to everything else 
in their sea-side health resorts. They neglect the 
quiet village of Granja, with its shaded walks through 
pine forests sweet with a profuse undergrowth of 



170 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

myrtles, for Es pinko, a little farther on — a place 
surrounded by shifting sands where no tree or shrub 
grows, and where the town is crowded with a fishing 
population ; for Espinho is the centre of the sardine 
fishery, and the sardine is to the Portuguese all that 
the herring is to the Hollander, the pilchard to the 
Cornishman, or the haddock to the Scotchman. 
Espinho with its glare, its fishy breezes, and its many 
abominations, is yet a paradise to the Oporto trades- 
man. Sanitary science does not flourish in Portugal, 
and therefore the death rate of Espinho is neither 
known nor guessed. It must be terrible in the 
summer months. 

The line passes by several interesting towns, and 
by some cities memorable in Portuguese history. 
This is true tourist ground ; an easily accessible 
region where the traveller may comfortably wander 
about, guide book in hand, sleep in fairly well ordered 
inns, and eat tolerable meals. I have already men- 
tioned that it is my purpose not to take the reader 
over beaten ground, and describe as'ain what has 
been better told by others; but rather to show 
him the byeways of the country, and to tell him 
something of the everyday life and habits of the 
people. I shall have very little to say, there- 
fore, about the " show places " of Portugal — about 
Coimbra, with its university — Thomar, with its 
fine conventual church — Alcobaca, with the remains 



TRAVELS m PORTUGAL. 171 

of its magnificent Cistercian monastery and its 
abbey, which holds the tombs of the sovereigns 
of Portugal — Batalha, with its inimitable architec- 
ture, inimitable not always in a complimentary sense 
— Mafra, with its huge eighteenth-century palace and 
convent — and Ointra, with its shaded groves and 
Moorish castle. All these beautiful, famous, or 
magnificent things are to be easily reached and seen 
from different stations on the railway between Lisbon 
and Oporto ; and upon every one of them the guide- 
books have descanted, with more or less of copious- 
ness and with more or less of correctness. 

The railway passes the marsh-girt towns of Ovar, 
Estarreja, and Aveiro, through a country of canals, 
dykes, and level meadows ; a country where the 
farmers are half fishermen and the fishermen half 
farmers ; where men are for ever engaged in their 
high-prowed, canoe-like boats, fishing up the weed 
which grows in the stagnant lagoons to serve for 
manure to the land, and where earth and water are 
so intermingled that barges in full sail seem to be 
passing through the midst of corn-fields. The whole 
country is a series of Dutch pictures ; but there are 
features which go to make up the landscape here, 
which the painter never sees in the Low Countries. 
There are cattle, of a shape and rich tawny colour 
such as Snyders or Potter never beheld ; there is 
the graceful, waving rice plant, the luxuriant growth 



172 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

of huge feathery reeds and bulrushes, such as no 
Northern painter could find the models of in his 
native marshes and moorlands ; and there are the 
picturesque, red-sashed boatmen, and their high- 
prowed, gaily painted skiffs, in place of the burly 
Dutch boor and his clumsy trek-shuyt ; and, above 
all, there are such glories of bright Southern light 
and warm shadow, such sunsets and sunrises, with 
their golden haze and accumulated splendours of 
colouring, as even Cuyp or Both never dreamt of. 

Next comes Coimbra ; a city dear to every edu- 
cated Portuguese, for at Coimbra is the university 
at which almost every Portuguese who has attained 
distinction in letters or in law has been taught. 
The town lies upon a hill side, looking down upon 
the river Mondego, whose gently flowing stream and 
pleasant banks have been sung in the verses of nearly 
all the poets of Portugal, who had learnt to love 
them while they were alumni at Coimbra. 

I leave it to the guide-books to describe the 
scene of the assassination of the beautiful Inez de 
Castro, and to go into the necessary raptures over 
an unfortunate young lady, whose romantic frailty and 
dramatic death have done as much as the poets to 
make her the national heroine of the sentimental 
Portuguese. But I must protest against " Mur- 
ray's" recording the very obvious misrepresentation 
inscribed upon a tree in the Quinta das Lagrimas, where 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 173 

Inez lived, — ee Eu dei sombra d Inez formosa" (I gave 
shade to the lovely Inez). It is very simple and pretty, 
and deserves to be true ; nevertheless, it is false at 
first glance, for the simple reason that the tree is a 
so-called Goa cedar, and the species could only have 
been introduced into Portugal about two hundred 
years after the death of Inez de Castro. So are 
guide-books written ! 

The university system at Ooimbra is professorial, 
as in Germany and Scotland ; not tutorial, as at our 
two great univer sites. There is a small literary fact 
connected with one of its professors, in the sixteenth 
century, which may interest our men of letters at 
home. The celebrated George Buchanan was for 
some years a professor at Coimbra.* There is every 
probability of his having been the friend and in- 
structor — for he was twenty-two years his elder — of 
the great Portuguese poet, Ferreira, the precursor 
of Camoens, who polished, refined, and classicized 
the Portuguese language almost to the same extent 
that Pope and Dryden did our own tongue. That 
the essentially classical Ferreira should have availed 
himself of the instructions of a man like Buchanan 
— the most brilliant scholar of his century, and the 
best writer of Latin prose and verse perhaps since 

* Bayle makes Buchanan's residence in Portugal last six years. 
Unfortunately for his influence upon Portuguese literature, most of 
these years were spent in the prisons of the Inquisition. 



174 TRAVELS IiY PORTUGAL. 

the age of Statius and the Younger Pliny — is so 
probable as to be akin to a certainty. 

Leaving Coimbra, the line goes due south to 
Pombal, whence the Marquis of Pombal, the Bis- 
marck of Portugal, derived his title, and where he 
spent his last years in banishment. Pombal was a 
man whose history is so bound up with that of his 
country that the travel writer who passes his name 
by without a word or two is not doing his duty by 
his reader. 

The patriotism of Portuguese writers, or their 
preconceptions, either liberal or ultramontane, have 
hitherto stood in the way of their fair appreciation 
of the state of things in Portugal which Pombal was 
enabled to reform. An impartial and fair account 
of the Portuguese court and its king, the govern- 
ment and the people, would at the present juncture 
of European affairs constitute an exceedingly salu- 
tary bit of reading. 

John V., whom history has named the " Mag- 
nanimous," dying in 1750, had left the kingdom in 
a very pitiable condition, after having misruled and 
ruined his country during forty-two years. He had 
tried to combine the magnificence and the piety of 
Louis XIY. with the debauchery of Louis XV. He 
copied Versailles at Mafra, and set up a " Parc-aux- 
Cerfs " in the convent of Odivellas. He encouraged 
neither learning, science, the arts, commerce, manu- 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 175 

factures, nor agriculture. He squandered the vast 
treasures of his country without doing anything to 
further its prosperity. His inconceivable folly and 
extravagant superstition were almost an excuse for 
the indecent rapacity of churchmen during his whole 
reign. Confessors and panders, fiddlers, singers, 
dancers, and courtezans streamed in from Spain, 
France and Italy, and devoured what they believed 
to be the inexhaustible treasures of the Brazilian 
dependencies. 

Portugal endured this monstrous rule for forty- 
two years, and when the king died, in 1750, the 
country was several millions sterling in debt. Lite- 
rature only existed in the worthless and lying lives 
of the saints ; the arts were represented by daubs 
depicting their histories. The navy had forgotten 
its old glories, and the great race of navigators and 
discoverers had died out. The army was completely 
disorganized : officers wearing the uniform of their 
king took service in the houses of the nobles and 
waited upon them at table : sentries on duty in 
the streets of Lisbon openly begged alms from the 
passers-by. 

Nothing but this melancholy condition of the 
country could have justified the rule of Pombal. 
The imbecility of the king had brought about a 
government which may be described as ecclesiastical 
rule, tempered by feudalism and corruption. The 



176 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

obvious result of this would have been the relapse 
of Portugal under the dominion of Spain, from 
which she had now been free more than a hundred 
years. The character of the new king was feeble in 
the extreme, and nothing but the energy of Pombal 
saved the people their independence and the king 
his crown, 

The great minister began life in the unpromising 
character of a roysterer and blackguard. Towards 
the end of the reign of the before-mentioned king 
John, the streets of Lisbon were overrun at night 
by bands of well-born ruffians who emulated the 
rowdyism of the London Mohawks. Conspicuous 
among these scamps was Sebastian de Carvalho, 
afterwards Marquis of Pombal, who in time sobered 
down into the statesman who was the saviour of 
Portugal, and who ruled the king, his master, for 
twenty- seven years. 

Few ministers have been so completely and for 
so long masters of the situation. He did good 
work, which certainly would not have been done 
but for him ; he checked the growing pride of 
churchmen and of the great nobles at a moment 
when they were threatening immense mischief to the 
State. He persecuted and banished the Jesuits. 
He was not a scrupulous man ; he imposed his will 
without stopping to inquire whether he did so on 
any constitutional principle. Neither was he an 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 177 

economic philosopher of advanced views, and he 
forced upon the ignorant community ideas of poli- 
tical economy which would have made Adam Smith 
groan. * He set up monopolies in all directions, 
but as he at the same time established a reign of 
law and order, and afforded comparative security to 
property, and a prospect of continuance to commer- 
cial adventure, and as a bad system well administered 
is better than a good one not administered at all, it 
came to be that his ideas took root and throve. 
Commerce revived, the country grew rich; and 
bribery, extortion and corruption ceased, while he 
governed, to be absolutely rampant and in the 
ascendant. 

Pombal was a man of extraordinary energy, 
courage and resources. When the city of Lisbon 
was thrown into a tumult of fear and despair by the 
great earthquake of 1755, when half the city was in 
ruins, and the flames were gaining on the remainder, 
when thousands of corpses lay unburied in the 
streets and in the shattered houses, when bands of 
desperadoes roamed through the city to rob, des- 
troy and murder, Pombal alone seems to have kept 
his senses. The king is said to have asked him, in 

* " Trade in order to be prosperous should not be free.** This, 
according to Sir Philip Francis (reputed author of " Junius," and 
who was attached to Lord Kinnoul's mission to Lisbon), was a 
favourite maxim of Pombal. 

12 



173 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

an agony of abject despondency, what was to be 
done, and lie to have answered, " Bury the dead, 
and feed the living ! " * It is related that for a fort- 
night he 'spent the greater part of each day and 
night in his carriage, seeing to the execution of his 
instruction ; he restored order, and in time composed 
the minds of men. It was certainly owing to him 
that the court of Portugal was not transferred to 
Bio de Janeiro ; so shaken was the confidence of 
king and courtiers in any sort of stability in the 
very order of things in Portugal, and so utterly 
terrified were they by this great convulsion of 
nature, that this measure had actually been resolved 
upon. 

It is singular with what respect his own country- 
men still regard the memory of Pombal. "Never," 
one of them has neatly said, " had so small a king- 
dom so great a minister." Though he died but 
ninety years ago, he is often spoken of by half- 
educated Portuguese almost as a hero of antiquity, 
whose appearance divides civilization from bar- 
barism, a being on the confines of history and 
fable. To the question, " When did such and such 
a thing happen ? " the answer will often be, " Oh, 

* It is alleged that this memorable saying was not Pombal's, but 
uttered by the Marquis Alorna. It matters little who made the 
speech. It was Pombal who did the thing, and Portugal is a 
country where wise sayings are commoner than wise acts. There 
has never been a scarcity of epigrams in Portugal. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 179 

hundreds of years ago — antes do tempo de Pombal 
— before Pombal' s time ! " 

Of course it is easy to get up a certain enthu- 
siasm for such a man as this ; but it is easier to 
admire this type when it has the surroundings 
of a Bismarck than those of a Pombal. Both, 
great statesmen, at once ambitious and patriotic 
rulers, and on the whole, benefactors of man ; but 
while we can unreservedly admire the character of a 
Bismarck, because we see in it the noblest and 
highest development which is possible in a nation 
of bureaucrats and martinets who have never tasted 
any form of freedom, it is melancholy to see a 
people who had, in ancient times, carved out for 
themselves their independence and a noble liberty, 
it is melancholy to see the Portuguese bow down 
before a type of minister who must perforce make 
slaves of his fellow-men before he can either rule 
them, or benefit them. 

Nobody who cares to look at a fine old church 
will pass by the abbey of Alcobaca. Of Batalha, 
not far from Alcobaca, it may perhaps be said that 
no architecture in the world ever got so many 
enthusiastic admirers among those who looked upon 
it. There is true beauty enough in the earlier work 
to satisfy the soundest artistic taste, and enough of 
tawdry superfluity of detail and of marvellously 



180 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

executed ornamentation to make the vulgar stare, 
and, to judge by the printed ecstasies on the sub- 
ject, be beside themselves with admiration. The 
conventual buildings stand on or near the site of the 
great battle of Aljubarrota, which decided the inde- 
pendence of Portugal. It need hardly be said that 
the name "Batalha" has the same meaning and 
derivation as our own "Battle," and " Battle 
Abbey." Three years after the date of the battle 
with the Castilians, which was fought in 1385, the 
building was begun ; and the works continued till 
1515. The earlier executed portions of the church 
and convent are exquisite, but much of the later 
work is simply abominable. The whole building has 
been excellently criticised in the " Ecclesiologist," 
and a very good summary of the article will be found 
in " Murray." 

Although a severe architectural taste must con- 
demn much of the work of the celebrated " Gajpella 
Imperfeita" — the unfinished chapel, built by the 
great King Emmanuel — even a critical judgment is 
carried off its balance by the magnificence of design 
and the astonishing elaboration of detail in this 
building — the work of a genius utterly despising the 
common rules of architecture. A fitting monument 
of the king who, through the discoveries of Vasco da 
Gama in the eastern regions of the world, and his 
ccn mests in South America, was raised to a pitch 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 181 

of wealth hitherto unknown among European sove- 
reigns. I quote from " Murray " part of his descrip- 
tion borrowed and abridged from the " Ecclesiolo- 
gist : " 

" The glory of this chapel is its western arch, surpassing in rich- 
ness anything even in the cloisters. The west side of the arch 
has seven orders of the most elaborate foliation, springing from 
hollow sockets; amongst knots, flowers, and foliage, the words 
Tanias el E/EY have been repeated over and over again. The 
meaning of the words has been much disputed. The tradition of 
the spot is that El Rey, The King, is of course King Emmanuel, 
and that Tanias was his favourite chronicler. The only objection 
to this is, that there never was such a person as Tanias. Other equally 
inadmissible derivations have been proposed by the antiquaries." 

It is certainly not a little characteristic of Por- 
tuguese archaeologists that they should have occu- 
pied themselves for more than three centuries in 
puzzling over this curious inscription, without 
arriving at any conclusion. A book might be filled 
with the ingenious extravagances of the native anti- 
quaries, who, with their eyes fixed on the clouds, are 
apt to disregard what lies at their feet. Tanias el 
Bey is, I have no doubt, only an anagram of Arte e 
Liny as. The puzzle is a good one, though not 
quite fair, for the El Bey is very misleading, and 
the use of the Latinized Portuguese of the period 
has clearly thrown the antiquaries off the scent. In 
Latin it would of course be Arte et lineis, and in 
modern Portuguese For arte e linhas.* 

* Latino-Portuguese and Latino-Spanish were not uncommon in 



182 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

The motto has no very thoughtful or profound 
significance, but neither was the pious, prosperous, 
art-loving King Emmanuel a very profound or a 
very thoughtful person ; and certainly this exquisite 
chapel is a signal instance of the marvellous result 
that a man may bring about, arte e linyas, by 
applying his artistic skill, and multiplying the 
traces of his hand, by stroke upon stroke, and line 
upon line. 

I hold it to be no slight misdemeanour in a 
traveller to make public the ways of life and the 
conversations of those who have hospitably en- 
treated him in a foreign country. Even to publish 
nothing but -what is good of our hosts is, surely, 
a dire offence against good taste : but to hold up 
the good and the bad together, to make literary 
capital out of the amiable eccentricities of those 
who open their doors to us ; to desecrate the hearth 
of a kindly host, that we may stimulate the curiosity 
of our readers ; to act the part of a literary free 
lance, and, getting free quarters and a welcome, 
to cram our wallet with all we can lay hands 
upon that we may, in our turn, furnish forth a feast 

inscriptions, epitaphs, mottoes, and other writings in which point 
and succinctness were sought after. The well-known legend on the 
sword-hilt of Isabella the Catholic, will occur to many readers, 
" Deseo siemjpre onera : nunc caveo, pax com migo" 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 183 

— this is surely a grave offence against the laws of 
hospitality, and may, if it continues, go far to des- 
troy that noble virtue altogether. I trust I may 
never (in the lack of "copy") ask the public to 
listen while I " interview " a distinguished native, nor 
take my reader inside a house where I have been 
made a welcome guest. The reader may suffer — the 
reviewer may complain — but the writer, secure in 
his virtue, is inexorable. 

There can however, of course, be nothing 
objectionable in any publicity given to the talk of 
chance acquaintance — wayfarers by coach, train, or 
steamer. If anything is to be gained by it, let their 
conversations reach a discerning public. For my 
own part, I have seldom been instructed or amused 
by the utterances of the many chance friends I have 
been thrown against. Men on their travels are 
taking in ideas, not discharging them ; and the pro- 
cess is not interesting to their neighbours. It is 
notorious to all travellers by sea, how dull their 
shipmates become after a day or two. Dana, the 
American, acutely remarks that it is the having 
to go without their daily dose of newspaper reading 
which makes ocean-going* travellers so little enter- 
taining as companions ; and the fact is sadly sugges- 
tive of a general poverty of ideas. 

Dana is speaking of American or English tra- 
vellers; foreigners, who seldom read newspapers, 



184 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

have not this excuse for their dulness on board ship. 
It is a fact, however, that a man will learn very- 
little of, let us say, the inner life and modes of 
thought of his fellow-passengers, even in a long 
voyage. I once travelled by a large steamer, the 
captain of which had spent half a lifetime in con- 
veying passengers of various nationalities, chiefly 
Brazilians and Portuguese. It was the first time I 
had encountered individuals of either nation, and I 
was curious. 

"What sort of people do you find them?" I 
asked the captain one day, as we paced the quarter- 
deck together. 

"Well, sir," he answered, " they're a queer lot, 
and that's the truth of it ! " 

"How so?" 

"For one thing," said the captain, "they all of 
them, man, woman and child, squeeze their feet 
into boots that it gives a man the cramp to look 
at." 

" And what besides ? " 

The captain turned short upon me, as if the 
second development of nationality was really almost 
beyond his patience. 

" When they eat roast beef, sir, they won't take a 
hit of mnstard ivith it. Ndw, that's a fact/ 9 ' 

When four or five Portuguese, of the shopkeeper 
or small merchant class, enter a railway carriage or 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 185 

a diligence where I am sitting, and talk to each, 
other at the top of their voices for several hours at a 
stretch, I consider myself under no delicacy as to 
reporting what they say, but, if I may be believed, 
the report would be a dull one. The Portuguese 
shopkeeper in his own shop is polite, sleepy, listless, 
thoroughly inefficient, and apparently quite indiffe- 
rent as to whether he sells his goods or keeps them. 
He would always rather gossip than deal, and seems 
to be in fear that if he diminishes his stock, he will 
have to be at the trouble of renewing it. He yawns 
across the counter at his customer, and makes a 
foreigner laugh at the incongruity of a man keeping 
things for sale, and not caring to sell them. The 
same man, out of his shop, is a different being — a 
talkative, pushing, rather noisy, and not over well- 
mannered person. 

I have often listened to the talk of such people, 
and have marvelled at the deplorable vacuity of their 
minds. The conversation of working men and 
peasants is infinitely more intelligent and entertain- 
ing. They would seem to care for none of those 
things which stir the minds of the thinking world. 
I have never heard a Portuguese of this class talk 
rationally, with any breadth of view, or with any- 
thing but parrot-like repetition of set phrases, about 
politics, religion, commerce, literature or art. We 
know how, in our own country, there are circles in 



186 TRAVELS IK PORTUGAL. 

which such topics are never cared for nor spoken of, 
and how, among such sections of society, men and 
women are apt to be voluble for all time upon how 
A was connected with the Bs of C, and married a D, 
whereby he had come to be a relation by marriage 
of all the Es ; and how each of the letters of the 
alphabet will, in its turn, suggest some new genea- 
logical complication to each of the persons present. 

This manner of talk is painfully prevalent among 
the Portuguese, and is, I think, more unendurable 
than at home ; for, while their family histories are 
as long, each individual will often have as many as 
five Christian names, to forget one of which is an 
unpardonable offence. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Lisbon — Cintra Overpraised — Monserrat, and the Author of Vathek — 
Moorish Palace Fort at Cintra — Pariah Dogs of Lisbon have 
Ceased to Exist — Dog Hunts — Humanity of the Portuguese — Mild 
Bull Fighting Practised in Portugal — Singidar Tameness of 
Domestic Animals — Native Newspapers — Their Timidity and 
Scanty News — Curious System of Avowedly Paid Literary Criti- 
cism — Modem Art Progress in Portugal disappointing — Re- 
pousse Work — Point Lace — Ancient Furniture — Caldas Faience — 
Paintings Deplorable — The Academy Exhibition — Gran Vasco and 
his supposed School. 

There are few more beautiful cities in the world than 
Lisbon. Without any particularly imposing build- 
ings, with few churches, no parks, and only one or 
two good-sized squares, the first aspect of Lisbon is 
very striking ; rising from the water's edge on its 
many hills, with its regular rows of tall, stately 
houses built of a peculiar greyish-yellow limestone, 
which has nearly the appearance of marble, and with 
everything looking bright and clean in the clear 
southern atmosphere. 

So large a proportion of travellers to various 
countries touch at Lisbon, and make this city the 
subject of a chapter in their books — so much printed 
expatiation has been made upon its noble river 



188 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

approach, its terrible earthquake, its architecture, its 
squares, the exquisite beauty of Cintra, and so 
forth, that, following the rule I have set myself, to 
avoid the repetition of what has been often and well 
said before, and to write only of what previous ob- 
servers have not cared to touch upon, I shall say 
nothing more of Lisbon, than that the beauties of 
its neighbour, Cintra, have been in my opinion 
greatly overpraised ever since the days of Byron and 
of Beckford; that its scenery owes much of the 
charm it possesses — and it does possess considerable 
charm — to the fact of the nineteen miles of road 
(the journey is now performed by rail) through a 
treeless, dusty and sun-baked country which inter- 
vene between it and the capital, and afford to Cintra, 
with its hills and greenery, all the charm derived 
from a strong contrast. 

Cintra has almost as undeserved a reputation as 
that once enjoyed by the eccentric and conceited 
sensualist Beckford, who built a cockney palace in 
its midst. When the history of defunct reputations 
comes to be written, a chapter will no doubt be 
given to show how it was that a whole generation 
persuaded themselves that there was real literary 
mastery in the stilted periods of Vatheh, and real 
architectural genius in such monstrous erections as 
Fonthill, in Wiltshire, and Monserrat at Cintra. 
This latter outrage upon architecture is now owned 



TRAVELS m PORTUGAL. 189 

by a London gentleman, who has filled it with Art 
Treasures from Wardour Street — fit contents of a 
building which can be compared to nothing in 
Europe but the Pavilion at Brighton, which it some- 
what resembles in general appearance, as well as in 
bad taste, poverty of conception, and pretentious- 
ness. The gardens at Monserrat, however, with 
their rare shrubs, tree ferns, and palms, are quite 
lovely. They are liberally thrown open to the 
somewhat cockney public which frequents Ointra. 

A few hundred yards from Monserrat, and near 
enough to form a striking contrast with it — the con- 
trast of true with false art — is the ancient Moorish 
fortified Palace of Cintra. The Portuguese are fond 
of speaking of this building as the Alhambra of 
Portugal, and the phrase has been unguardedly 
caught up by two or three English writers of travel, 
of whom it may in consequence be asserted that they 
have not seen either one or the other of these build- 
ings — perhaps neither. Both are ancient Moorish 
buildings, but Cintra is about as like the Alhambra 
as Kenilworth Castle is like Westminster Abbey. 
Moreover, the Moorish portion at Cintra is nearly 
quite overlaid with Christian architecture. 

Old travellers used to make a great point of the 
dirt of Lisbon, and no doubt with perfect justice. 
Another stock subject with them used to be the 



190 TRAVELS I2T PORTUGAL. 

packs of half- wild dogs which prowled over the city, 
and even made its streets dangerous at night-time ; 
but these charges can no longer be made. Lisbon 
is now as cleanly as any large city of Southern 
Europe, that is, in its best parts, and in those likely 
to be frequented by foreigners ; in its slums and 
crowded courts evil smells exist that might be 
photographed, but I have experienced as yet nothing 
quite so unsavoury as the atmosphere of Monmouth 
Street or Dudley Street, in London, and the English 
tourist may here again complacently point to the 
superiority of his native country. 

As to the bands of half- wild' pariah dogs, which 
in old days made Lisbon like an Oriental city, a 
great reform has been effected, and human scaven- 
gers now do the work of canine ones. The reform 
was not easily accomplished, for it was found -diffi- 
cult to diminish the numbers of the self- constituted 
scavengers by poison, seeing that the spectacle of 
dead and dying dogs in the streets aroused the 
susceptibilities and indignation of the inhabitants, 
although the animals had become a real pest. Their 
ever-increasing numbers are now checked by perio- 
dical hunts, which are effected at night and offend no 
one. A net is drawn, on a dark night, across a 
leading street, and the dogs of a whole neighbour- 
hood driven towards the spot ; as they become en- 
tangled in its meshes, a man kills them with a blow 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 191 

on the head, and throws their bodies into a cart. 
This method is at once more effectual and more 
merciful than poison; and by its employment the 
homeless dogs of Lisbon have come to be no more 
numerous than those of Paris or London. 

Humanity — -innate and instinctive mercifulness, 
as distinguished from the noisy humanitarianism of 
which we hear so much in these days — is very cha- 
racteristic of the Portuguese people. Many evidences 
of such true humanity are to be met with. The bull- 
fights of the Portuguese are singular exhibitions of 
imbecility on the part of all concerned, but there is 
no spice of cruelty in their imitation of the bloody 
Spanish sport, of which it may safely be alleged that 
no more demoralizing and brutalizing spectacles have 
been shown to the people since the gladiatorial com- 
bats of Imperial Eome.* In the Portuguese bull- 
fight the bull is teased, but while neither horse nor 
bull is ever seriously injured, the danger to the men 
is positively greater than in the Spanish exhibitions 
of cruelty and cowardice. 

* Among the various causes which have contributed to convert 
the most chivalrous into the least chivalrous nation of Europe, these 
detestable exhibitions probably hold a chief place. The loyalty and 
fidelity of such men as Pescara and Alva, the tone of the sixteenth 
century Spanish drama, the chivalrous loyalty breathed by the old 
Castilian romances, and, if further proof were wanting, the spirit 
of "Don Quixote" itself, are evidence enough of the intense loyalty 
of Spaniards in old times. Things are very different in the Spain 
of to-day, where the people seem to be incapable of loyalty either to 
their rulers or to their principles. 



192 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

The tameness in Portugal of all domestic animals 
— cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry — resulting from 
habitual kind treatment, is striking to a foreigner. 
The especial favourite of the Portuguese is the dog ; 
and the nation differs in this respect, so far as 
my observation goes, from every other people of 
Southern Europe, among whom the dog holds a low 
place, compared, at least, with his estimation by the 
Teutonic races. 

The natives of Portugal, though from motives of 
whimsical delicacy, they hesitate to pronounce the 
word dog 9 * treat the canine race with extraordinary 
kindness, and care for their dogs as much as we do 
ourselves, the traditional Moorish antipathy to the 
animal extending only to his name. A fanatical 
Mussulman has been heard to wonder at the Chris- 
tian's affection for an animal which his own religion 
holds so low. To love one's dog is, indeed, a purely 
Christian virtue. The Mahometan and Brahmin 
despise him, and the Buddhist ranks him with swine, 
and sometimes eats him ; it is only the Christian who 
has learnt to appreciate this type of attachment and 
fidelity. The Catholic Portuguese and the Protes- 
tant of Northern Europe can here meet on common 

* Even in print they slide over the objectionable word with an 
initial and two stars, as we designate a " wicked word " in onr police 
reports. I have seen the name of a well-known place in Lisbon, 
Fonte do olho do Cao, the fountain of the Dog's eye, printed Fonte 
do olho do C**. Can a delicate susceptibility be carried further? 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 193 

ground ; and if the one can cite St. Francis and St. 
Hubert, the other can quote the authentic legend of 
Martin Luther to support his attachment to dogs. 
" Don't growl, Hans," the great reformer is known 
to have said to his dog, " and when the resurrection 
comes, I promise that you shall have a golden 
tail ! " 

An Englishman, or an American, who should 
expect to get much knowledge of Portuguese ways 
from native newspapers, would be disappointed. 
The newspaper fills but a small part of the life either 
of Spaniards or Portuguese. Eeligious, literary, 
scientific, legal and social life in Portugal are hardly 
^reflected at all in the journals ; and if it were not for 
the political news they contain, newspapers would 
probably not find readers at all. Portuguese ladies 
rarely take up a newspaper, and men only look to 
them for their politics. The speeches of the Portu- 
guese Parliament are scantily reproduced ; the most 
important arguments in their own law courts are 
seldom reported at all, and. deliberate discussion on 
questions of home politics is hardly ever introduced 
into the columns of newspapers. 

Their own domestic concerns, indeed, hardly seem 
to trouble the newspaper writers, and they visibly 
shrink from all strong expression of opinion on vital 
quests, onil happened to be in Portugal when the 

13 



194 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

so-called Iberian Question, the question of a union 
with Spain, was stirring the minds of all classes. 
Mass meetings were being held, and indignant pro- 
tests were being made against the proposition, yet 
the newspapers, with hardly an exception, gave no 
echo of the strong feeling that animated public 
opinion. Reports of interviews between the Russian 
and German emperors, vague speculations on the 
policy of the great powers, reported conversations of 
Prince Bismarck or M. Thiers — all the unsubstantial 
rumours that fill the columns of European journals, 
all the canards started on the Boulevards of Paris, 
or in the clubs of London — these are what the poli- 
ticians of Portugal care to read about, far more than 
to know and watch the doings of their own states- 
men. 

A modern Portuguese newspaper, on its tiny 
sheet, brings home to us very vividly the days of 
'News Letters and Flying Mercuries in our own coun- 
try. There is the same scantiness of domestic in- 
telligence, the same triviality in the incidents related, 
the same preponderance of foreign over domestic 
news, and the same absence of all serious debate 
and argument. 

Not many years ago, Mr. Bright publicly de- 
plored the discussion of political questions by journal- 
ists, and seriously suggested that the newspaper 
press of Great Britain should be confined to the 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 195 

imparting of news alone, unaccompanied by re- 
marks thereon. This eminent politician, departing 
not a little from the sound common sense which so 
often characterizes his political judgments, depre- 
cated the criticism of public men and of political 
events by anonymous writers, and conceived that 
for such criticism should be substituted the utter- 
ances of politicians at public meetings. He would, 
in fact, prefer oral appeals to the feelings and the 
impulses of noisy assemblies, to calmer ones to the 
reason of individual readers. Under such a pro- 
posed regime, the Lisbon and Oporto journals would 
form admirable models for our " Times,'' " Stan- 
dard," " Daily News " and " Pall Mall Gazette." 
Our weekly journals, dealing with political matters, 
our " Saturday Reviews " and " Spectators," would, 
of course, cease altogether to exist. 

Although regular Law Eeports are seldom given, 
the incidents which our newspapers bring together 
under the heading Accidents and Offences, are the 
staple of home news. The French mode of re- 
counting the event is adopted ; it is told as a story 
or anecdote, with as much literary artifice as the 
journalist can employ; and often the story is well 
told, and with a little dash of fun. The following 
description of the accumulated misfortunes of a 
pleasure party is in a vein of grave humour which 
it seems the Portuguese much appreciate : — 



196 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

" On Sunday, a serious accident happened. Five 
individuals were on their way in a hired carriage to 

, taking with them four dozen rockets. One of 

the party amused himself by firing a rocket on the 
way, and, in doing so, unfortunately ignited the 
whole bundle, which began to explode in all direc- 
tions, some darting out of the windows, some out of 
the door, and others doing no inconsiderable hurt to 
the persons inside. The horses took fright at the 
repeated explosions, and bolted through the village 

of , the unfortunate passengers adding to the 

terror and speed of the animals by putting their 
heads out of the carriage windows and screaming 
loudly for help. Finally, the coachman lost all 
command of the reins, and the horses bolted from 
the road and plunged into the river, where the depth 
of water and mud finally arrested the further pro- 
gress of the vehicle. The discharge of rockets, and 
the cries of the half-drowning passengers still con- 
tinuing, a large crowd collected on the banks, and 
after exertions, which lasted for several hours, the 
passengers (who are all seriously burnt) were drawn 
with ropes out of the carriage through the water and 
on to the shore, whence they were immediately lodged 
in prison, charged with breaking the public peace," 

Here is a police case reported with the same 
somewhat grim humour :— 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 197 

" An individual, calling himself Jeremy da Silva, 
twenty-ft>e years of age, was charged with purchas- 
ing a water-melon without manifesting any disposi- 
tion to pay for the same. The weather is at present 
very hot, and the water melon is a singularly agree- 
able remedy for the thirst occasioned thereby ; but 
is this a reason why Jeremy da Silva should be 
oblivious of one of the first principles of political 
economy? To buy without giving an equivalent 
in specie is, if we may tell him so, only another 
name for stealing. This, also, was the opinion 
of the worthy magistrate. Mr. da Silva is now in 
prison. ,, 

This solemn banter soon gets very fatiguing to a 
foreigner, but it seems to have a great charm for 
native readers, if one may judge from its frequent 
occurrence. 

The weather, in the dearth of more stirring topics, 
is a fertile theme. There happened to be a day or 
two of rather stormy weather, and this is how copy 
was made out of the fact : — 

" The Weathee. — For the last two days we have 
undergone the unchained fury of the most rigorous 
winter. Wind, rain, lightning and hail, have com- 
bined to make- the most astounding atmospheric 
disturbance. , . ." and so on for half a column, 
ringing the changes upon the very tallest adjectives. 



108 TRAVELS EST PORTUGAL. 

and only telling the reader what he knew very well 
by the report of his own senses. 

Perhaps the most singular of the contents of the 
Portuguese newspapers are the obituary notices. 
Written in a style so exquisitely pompous and stilted 
as to make the foreign reader incline at first to think 
them ironical, these long eulogies on the dead are 
paid for as advertisements, and are generally signed 
with the name of one of the relatives of the deceased 
person. A few extracts will suffice to show how 
false emotion and a false style can desecrate feelings 
which it is only commonly decent to hold back from 
observation : 

" It is now seventy-two hours since the pious Mr. 
A. B. ceased to exist ! 

"It is now seventy-two hours since the 
most severe affliction has stricken the hearts 
of his bereaved relations in their most tender 
fibres ! 

" It is now seventy-two hours since he died, in 
the summer of his life, as also in the height and 
summer of his virtues ! 

" It is now seventy-two hours since this great 
man, great in his intelligence and in his practice of 
all the Christian virtues . . . ..;" and so on, 
through a long list of paragraphs, beginning with 
the same minute chronological calculation, and all 
full of the same rhetorical foolishness. The deceased 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 199 

gentleman, if I recollect rightly, had kept a cigar 
shop in Lisbon. 

Another similar and very curious development of 
Portuguese journalism is the insertion of paid eulo- 
gies of literary productions. I use the expression 
" curious " only because the payment is avowed and 
open, being honestly signed with the name of the 
friendly critic, and placed in a column set apart for 
advertisements. It is impossible altogether to dis- 
approve of this practice. It is odd that it has not 
yet occurred to Portuguese critics to enhance the 
value of their approval by occasional dispraise. I 
have never seen an unfriendly literary critique in a 
Portuguese journal. 

The traveller in Portugal, with any curiosity as 
to the development of modern art, is likely to be 
disappointed. Architecture is at a standstill, paint- 
ing is at a low ebb, sculpture, to my knowledge, 
hardly exists as a Portuguese art ; and the Portu- 
guese for the last two hundred years have made no 
figure whatever in the arts of design ; though the 
beautiful Portuguese repousse work of the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries, the old Portuguese point- 
lace, the marvellously fine and massive carved black 
wood furniture of two hundred years ago, testify to 
latent faculties in this direction of a high order. 

Some attempts have recently been made to estab- 
lish art potteries. Imitations of majolica are pro- 



200 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

duced in or near Lisbon, of a very poor sort. At 
Caldas da Rainha, to the north of the capital, a 
faience has been made of a very high art value — 
groups and figures of birds and animals, modelled 
with singular correctness and spirit, are covered 
with a thin stanniferous glaze, wonderfully rich and 
brilliant. I know nothing of the sort in the country 
which can compare with this Caldas pottery. 

Painting is, as I have said, at a low ebb. In the 
last Paris International Exhibition, there were, as 
every one knows, several departments devoted to 
the works of modern painters belonging to each 
separate nation. The world looked with some 
astonishment at the art work of Portugal ; and was 
inclined at first to suspect that some huge practical 
joke underlay the exhibition of Portuguese pictures. 
The serious art critic was taken aback. Immense 
framed canvasses were hung on the walls, on which 
kings and generals, regardless of perspective, be- 
strode horses even more remarkable in colouring 
and proportion than themselves. The colouring 
was so conscientious, the uniforms so uncompro- 
misingly red and blue, the horses so vivid in hue, 
the high boots of the riders were so intensely black, 
the hair and whiskers of the noble personages who 
bestrode them so precisely corresponded in colour 
with their boots, that the spectators who found their 
way into the room were delighted: their eyes, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 201 

wearied with the uniform mediocrity of the other 
exhibitions, rested with a sense of relief on these 
novel works, and shouts of laughter were to be 
heard all day long in the Portuguese department. 

These wretched daubs were, however, not quite 
representative of Portuguese art. It is a small 
country, and not a rich one ; there is little educated 
art criticism, and no demand for pictures of a high 
class ; and, until recently, no state or public patron- 
age of painters. Moreover, the Portuguese neither 
are, nor ever were a people with strong art sympa- 
thies like the Italians, the Flemings, or even the 
Dutch. Yet under all these unfavourable circum- 
stances, this small people has produced several 
fairly good painters, and, if tradition may be trusted, 
at least one excellent artist. 

There are two living Portuguese painters who 
would be distinguished anywhere. Senhor Resende 
of Oporto is a pupil of the French artist Yvon, and 
has done work not unworthy of his teaching. An- 
tonio Pereira of Viseu has learnt his art from, and 
founded his style upon, the works of the unknown 
artists of the school, apparently, of the Van Eycks, 
whose pictures enrich the, walls of the cathedral of 
that city. Senhor Pereira's most important work is 
a large altar-piece in the cathedral ; pure in concep- 
tion and true in design, the colouring is a little 
conventional, and the whole treatment somewhat 



202 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

" academical ;" the picture is nevertheless a notice- 
able one. A more original work and, in my opinion, 
one of far higher value, is his portrait of the bishop 
of Yiseu — lately prime minister of Portugal — a strik- 
ing portrait of a fine and expressive head. 

A good general notion of the art capabilities 
of ancient and modern Portugal can be got by a 
visit to the Academia das Bellas Artes in Lisbon. 
There are many pictures with good foreign names 
attached to them in the catalogue ; but of genuine 
works by the great masters, I have seen no gallery 
in Europe with so much " canvas spread " of so 
little value. It is not quite proper to reduce works 
of high art to a money standard ; but if I desired to 
bring the value of the collection home to the com- 
prehension of a connoisseur or collector of paintings 
at home, I should do so most readily by saying that 
not a dozen pictures in it would bring fifty pounds at 
Christie's auction rooms in London, or at the Hotel 
Drouot in Paris ; and that the vast majority of the 
works would fetch less than five pounds at either 
of these establishments. Mediocrity and positive 
rubbish are the words which best describe the Na- 
tional Gallery of Portugal. 

It would indeed be little to the credit of a small 
country with a by no means flourishing exchequer, 
had it chosen to treat itself to a really valuable na- 
tional picture gallery. There has, however, been 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL 203 

no sort of improper generosity, and the grants 01 
government have been exceedingly scanty. With 
one exception the Lisbon gallery, like our own in 
Trafalgar Square, owes a great deal to the liberality 
of individuals — chief among them of Dom Ferdinand, 
the king's father, who in three years presented from 
his private income no less than £14,000 for the use 
of the gallery. To this munificence, and to this 
prince's great art knowledge and judgment, and to 
the zeal and taste of the Marquis de Souza Holstein,. 
the gallery owes its existence. 

It was formed in 1836, and the foundation was 
the stock of pictures found in the various convents 
suppressed in 1 833. Of these pictures, five hundred 
and forty of the best were selected by a Govern- 
ment commission appointed for the purpose, and 
again the best of these were hung on the walls of 
the gallery. They are now contained in a single 
room, and can be studied as a whole with convenience* 

These paintings, some years ago, would have 
been set down by almost any Portuguese as the 
works of Gran Vasco — the great Yasco — a re- 
nowned but mythical Portuguese painter of the 
sixteenth century ; but they are now more cau- 
tiously ascribed, in the gallery catalogue and else- 
where, to the " ancient Portuguese school of 
painters." The theory adopted is that the Van 
Eyck style of painting was adopted by the Por- 



204 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

tuguese in about the year 1500, that they 

maintained its curious mannerism unchanged for 
no less than a hundred and fifty years. If the works 
in this room are representative of this singular 
native school, as according to this view they should 
be, the sooner Portuguese critics abandon a theory 
so little creditable to Portuguese originality and so 
suggestive of an almost Chinese subservience to 
precedent, and a quite grovelling instinct for con- 
ventionality, the better for the fame of Portuguese 
art. 

Looking to the fact that the great poet of Portu- 
gal, keenly alive to everything that could contribute 
to the glory of his country, distinctly deplores the 
circumstance that at the very time when the painters 
of these canvases would have been at work, there 
were no Portuguese artists in Portugal, for the 
reason that native artists could win neither fame 
nor profit in their own country ; looking to the fact 
that Flanders was at that time the Birmingham of 
art, and that, while Flemish studios produced some 
of the grandest masterpieces of the period, they 
sent forth an immense quantity of cheap, second- 
rate work in every department of art; looking to 
the recorded fact that when these pictures were 
being painted, many Flemish artists were actually 
in Portugal and Spain, working for the convents 
and. churches of the Peninsula — I am absolutelv 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 205 

convinced that the majority of these pictures are 
the work of Flemish painters.* Some of them were 
doubtless exported from the cities of Flanders, some 
the work of foreigners too poor in skill to hold their 
own in their native country ; some of the very 
worst are perhaps too bad to have been the work 
of any foreign painter, and may have been ac- 
complished by an ambitious Portuguese colour- 
grinder, or an idle monk with a little talent for 
imitation. 

There is not a spark of true artistic genius, there 
is no sign in the best picture in the collection of 
anything more than a decent workman's execution. 
There are a sameness, a respectable mediocrity, and 
an evident appearance of being manufactured to 
order about the pictures, that make one certain of 
their origin ; and if any picture in the collection 
were claimed as a gem of early Portuguese art, 

* The Marquis de Souza Holstein, in his excellent introductory 
notice prefixed to the catalogue, has, I am sorry to say, adopted the 
position of the Portuguese origin of these works. He lays some 
stress upon representations in a few of them of Portuguese coins, 
architecture, and church vestments; but that this should occa- 
sionally be the case proves nothing. A foreign painter working in 
Portugal would, of course, imitate native objects, so far as his 
conventionality allowed him; but the attempt at such imitation 
generally breaks down. As one instance among many, let the 
drawing of a Portuguese cart in the picture of the " Body of St. 
James drawn by oxen," be examined, and it will be conceded that the 
construction of the common country cart — naturally familiar to» 
every native Portugiiesc — was not understood by the painter. 



206 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

one might be tempted to exclaim with Captain 
Bobadil, — 

" A Fleming ! by the foot of Pharaoh ! l 9 ll buy 
them for a guilder apiece, an 9 I would have a thousand 
of them J" 



CHAPTER IX. 

From Lisbon to Evora — Lost Fertility of Great South Tagus Plain- 
Fine Roman Remains at Evora — Abundance and Triviality of 
Roman Inscriptions — Elvas — Wrong Choice of a Guide — His 
Blunders, his Ghost Stories, and General Imbecility — Legend of 
the Seven Whistlers — The Guide's Terror — Benighted in a 
Forest — Recovery of Horses and Guide. 

In travelling by railway due east from Lisbon on to 
Evora, and thence by road towards the Spanish 
frontier, we are once more on ground described over 
and over again. We get hurried glimpses of a dis- 
mal country through the windows of the railway 
carriage; for a long way a dreary plain, here and 
there a collection of pine trees, wind-tormented and 
stunted, then a long reach of sand, then a canal-like 
stream, too sluggish for irrigation ; then great sea- 
like prairies of heath and cistus, with scarcely a 
sign of human habitation or cultivation. Few 
inhabitants are visible anywhere, and those seen 
are listless, sallow and gaunt-featured, as if from 
breathing all their lives the ague-laden air of this 
inhospitable region. 



208 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

A French traveller who had reached Lisbon by 
this route from Spain, had spoken to me but a few- 
days before of the marvellous fertility of the country. 
He had talked of the great droves of pigs, of corn- 
lands and vineyards, and of olive groves so numerous 
and productive that, as he picturesquely observed, 
the ground " seemed to be actually oozing with 
oil." It was not till I reached Evora and the com- 
paratively rich country between it and the border, 
that I began to understand the cause of the discre- 
pancy between the French traveller's observation 
and my own. He had come from Madrid by Bada- 
joz over the interminable yellow sandy tracts which 
make up five- sixths of the central table-land of Spain. 
On reaching the Portuguese frontier he had seen 
well cultivated land, much chestnut wood, and many 
olive trees. Travelling by diligence through Elvas, 
he would pass through the most fertile district of 
the province of Alemtejo, and taking the train again 
at Evora, it was clear enough that my acquaintance 
had paid little attention to — had probably slept 
through — the melancholy tract of country which had 
made so strong an impression upon me. 

It is something of a puzzle why this great plain 
to the south of the Tagus should be thus barren ; 
the soil is deep and rich, the climate good, and it is 
only here and there that fevers are prevalent. An 
explorer coming upon such a stretch of country 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 209 

might well think lie had found a land which should 
turn into an El Dorado of corn-lands, a typical wheat- 
producing earth, where he might match the Ameri- 
can's thousand-acre fields, plough a straight furrow 
for miles in any direction, and find water conveyance 
for his corn to a central market ; and so far as the 
actual capabilities of land and climate go, his ex- 
pectations would be well founded. This province of 
the Alemtejo was once famous for its great wheat 
crops. The Romans called it the Sicily of the 
Peninsula, and the Moors made it the granary of 
Southern Spain and Portugal. It was a garden 
when the great founder of the Portuguese monarchy 
overthrew the Saracens, winning his decisive victory 
upon them at Ourique, in its midst, and laying waste 
this fertile province of his enemies, which has never 
since recovered its ancient fertility. 

Political economists may settle it how they will, 
and may ascribe the present barrenness of Alemtejo 
to what and to whom they like, to want of capital 
or want of energy in the population. The history 
of Alemtejo is the history of the once fertile Roman 
provinces of Asia, of the great corn-producing plain 
of the Campania, and of Sicily itself. 

At Evora there are Roman remains of great 
interest. Evora was at one time the Roman capital 
of that considerable part of modern Portugal which 
the Romans called Lusitania. This city, Braga in 

14. 



210 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL 

the north, and Santarem in the west, formed the 
triangle of Eoman centres corresponding to the 
similar triangle in Eoman England of York, Chester, 
and Exeter. 

Here are the remains of a fine aqueduct, and the 
ruins of a temple to Diana, and of a tower, or, 
technically, a castellum — the reservoir for the water 
of the aqueduct. Both these buildings are set down 
to so early a period as that of Quintus Sertorius, 
the Eoman general ; that is, about seventy or eighty 
years B.C. These ruins, which have been perhaps not 
unjustly described as the finest Eoman remains out 
of Italy, are interesting to the student of architec- 
ture, apart from their archaeological value which I 
do not profess to assess. The well-marked Christian 
Eoman esque of Portugal, and the long lingering* 
of this pre- Gothic style in the country, are facts 
intelligible enough to one who looks upon such 
admirable work as this aqueduct, this temple, and 
this tower. 

The traveller in Portugal, unless he have long 
before imbibed the tastes of an antiquarian, is apt to 
get his appetite more than satisfied with the vestiges 
of Eoman dominion. I doubt if the monumental 
inscriptions in all Great Britain, all the English- 
Eoman mosaics, baths, coins, milliary columns, put 
together in a single county, would lie so thickly on 
the ground as they do in the small district round 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 211 

Evora, Elvas, and Beja. The traveller finds these 
remains at every step. In a house at Mertola, on 
the Guadiana, is a handsome square bas-relief with 
an inscription wanting but a letter or two. Such a 
monument as would make the pride of any pro- 
vincial museum in France or England has only been 
preserved at Mertola because it made a convenient 
lintel to the door of a cow-house. Near Ponte de 
Lima, by the roadside, lies a milliary column half 
imbedded in the earth, with a mouldering inscription, 
from which a good antiquary could no doubt fix the 
exact position of the ancient Forum Limicorum. On 
the bank of the Douro, near its embouchure, and 
close to its very dangerous sea bar, I found lying 
uncared for, as I have already mentioned, the curious 
inscribed beacon formerly set on a rock in the main 
channel ; but antiquarians are rare in Portugal, and 
to the non-antiquarian mind such inscriptions are 
often singularly poor in interest. The old Romans 
seem to have been possessed of the mania to hand 
down to posterity the most trifling occurrences ; the 
proceedings of Caius and Balbus, as related by Mr. 
Thomas Kerchever Arnold, are eventful and im- 
portant as compared with the facts I found recorded 
on most of these ancient stones. 

Arrived at Elvas, famous for its military lines, 
its aqueduct, its cathedral, and its plums — all of 
which the optimist inhabitants fully believe to be 



212 TEA VELS IN PORTUGAL. 

the best and finest of known plums, cathedrals, 
aqueducts, and fortifications — I bought the best 
horse I could find, hired a guide, and started with 
the intention of riding through the wild country on 
either side of the Guadiana to the sea at its embou- 
chure in the ancient kingdom of Algarve. 

I had travelled but a little way before I made two 
unpleasant discoveries — one, that I had got a horse 
so lazy that after the first league he was continually 
coming to a dead stop ; the other that my guide was 
as great a fool as he looked, which I had thought 
impossible. Finding that he had failed to pack up 
one or two of my own things, I made him turn out 
the contents of his own saddle-bags, and found even 
greater deficiencies than in my own. His forge tful- 
ness brought home to him, he exhibited such excess 
of astonishment, and talked such nonsense on the 
subject, that I felt that the question of fool or knave 
must be settled forthwith. 

" Francisco," I said, " either you are a greater 
donkey than it is permissible for a human being to 
be, or else you are a rogue. In either case, we must 
go back to Elvas," and I turned my horse's head 
round. 

Francisco's innocence and his stupidity were 
triumphantly established when we reached the inn, 
the clothes and rugs he had forgotten being still in the 
room I had occupied ; and the poor fellow showed 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 213 

so much delight at being reinstated in my good 
opinion that I could not find it in my heart to get 
rid of him. I looked well at the man to try to 
take some measure of the troubles I could foresee 
he would bring upon me. He was a well set-up 
young man, strong-looking, but with a shambling 
walk that betrayed his lack of fibre, a good-humoured 
face, a constant smile, a perpetual flow of conversa- 
tion, and that universal sign of simplicity — a hat set 
on the back of his head. I determined to run my 
chance, on the good principle that an amiable fool is 
always a better companion than a sulky knave ; but 
I made a great mistake in this instance, and I was 
not to get through the first day's travel without 
very serious cause to regret my choice of a 
guide. 

We rode on together in a south-westerly direc- 
tion, through a well cultivated, hilly country, well 
wooded and well watered. Towards evening our 
road lay over a cistus and heath covered moor, 
where the aromatic shrubs of various kinds reached 
in places to the horses' girths ; a slight drizzle of 
rain began to set in, and the night promised to be 
wet and disagreeable. 

" We shall reach Juromenha at about eight 
o'clock," said my guide, who assured me he knew 
every inch of the road, and could find his way blind- 
fold. 



214 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

" I am glad to hear it," I said, " for in an hour 
it will be quite dark." 

We journeyed on in silence. The night was 
cloudy, and it was pitch dark, that is, as dark as it 
ever is where there are no trees or buildings to 
obscure the little light that almost always remains 
in the heavens. We had been moving across the 
level plain for some half hour. A low-lying, black 
cloud, dimly seen in the obscurity, got blacker and 
more distinct as we neared it, but not till we were 
almost in its shadow did I make out that it was a 
thick forest. 

" I wonder if there are any wolves in this part 
of the country ? " said my foolish guide in a tone of 
assumed indifference. 

" Quite certain to be," I said; " but I thought, 
Francisco, you knew every inch of the country." 

" So I do by daylight ; but I think we should 
have kept the high road to the south," he said, and 
I went on not reassured. 

" It is lucky there are no brigands, at any rate," 
said Francisco presently, " or else I should think 
twice before I entered a wood like this by night." 

" They could shoot you better in the day-time," 
I observed. 

" Ha ! ha ! " he laughed ; " they would never 
be able to see us in a wood like this, would 
they ? " 



TBAVELB IN PORTUGAL. 215 

<e No ; but the ghosts would." 

He had been plaguing me all day with very silly 
ghost stories. 

" There are no such things/' he said bravely. 

I made no reply. 

"Your Excellency does not really believe in 
ghosts ? " 

" I never saw one. What sort of ghosts do you 
mean ? " 

" I mean," said my guide, drawing his horse 
close up to mine and dropping his voice, " I mean 
the spirits of the dead released from purgatory and 
compelled to wander about the earth with witches 
and warlocks. They say that if they can catch a 
man alone on a dark night like this, coming up 
behind him and pouncing on him before he has 
time to say an c Ave ' or a ' Pater/ he is a lost 
man." 

"But no doubt, Francisco, you carry some 
blessed relic or other about you, and then, you 
know, no ghost can do you any harm." 

" No, your Excellency, worse luck ! I carry no 
such thing. I left a little picture behind me at Elvas 
that was blessed by the Beata of Ari&na** I would 

* The Beata, or Holy Woman, of Arifana, a small town in 
Northern Portugal, is a poor, bedridden old creature, who has, for 
I know not how many years, abstained, or all but abstained, from 
meat and drink, and who is miraculously elevated about a yard above 
her bed whenever she takes the sacrament — that is, about once a 



216 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

give three cruzados to have it in my pocket at this 
moment ! " 

" Never mind," I said, " I am a heretic, and the 
ghosts will seize me first, if they are true orthodox 
ghosts. Then, Francisco, do you put spurs to your 
horse's sides, and gallop away for your dear soul. 
I only hope, for your sake, the evil one was not at 
hand just now, when you valued it at three 
cruzados. If he were to take you at your word, it 
would be the worst bargain you ever made in your 
life ! " 

" I see your Excellency laughs at the ghosts, and, 
to be sure, I, myself, when I am in the wine- shop 
with my friends, have laughed too at these old 
women's stories ; but if these are lies, there is no 
lie about the Seven Whistlers, for many a man 
besides me has heard them." 

" And who are the Seven Whistlers ? " 

" Yes, to be sure, who are they ? If we knew 
that, the priests could exorcise them so that they 
should not frighten honest folk at dusk on winter's 
nights." 

"You have seen them yourself? " 

" Not seen, thank heaven, or I should not be 
alive to tell your Excellency the story, but I have 

week. Her reputation throughout Portugal has greatly extended 
within the last three or four years. I had the pleasure and privilege 
of paying this future saint a visit. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 217 

heard them plenty of times — heard them whistling 
and screaming in the air close over my head. Some 
say they are the ghosts of children unbaptized, who 
are to know no rest till the Judgment Day. Once, 
last winter, the night before the New Year, I was 
going with three donkeys and a mule, laden with 
flour, to Caia ; the road passes by the bank of the 
river nearly all the way, and I stopped to tighten 
the molds girth. Just at that moment — Holy Vir- 
gin ! I shook all over like a milho leaf — I say just 
at that moment I heard the accursed Whistlers 
coming down the wind along the river. I buried 
my head under the mulo's belly, and never moved it 
until the danger was over; but they must have 
passed very near, for I heard the flap and rustle of 
their wings as clear as I hear the tread of our horses' 
feet on the ground at this moment." 
" And what was the danger ? '' 
" The danger ? Only that if a man once looks 
up at them, and sees them, heaven only knows what 
will not happen to him — death and damnation at the 
very least." 

" When I think," said I, " that I have seen them 
scores of times ! " 

Francisco clearly did not believe me. 
" And what did your Excellency do ? " he asked, 
after a pause. 

" I shot them, or tried to." 



218 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

" Holy Mother of God ! you English are an 
awful people. My father and mother have stories 
about your nation that I never believed till now. 
You shot at the Seven Whistlers ? " 

"Yes; we call them marecos (teal or widgeon), 
in our country, and shoot them whenever we can. 
They are better to eat than wild ducks." 

Francisco said nothing to this. I believe he 
crossed himself at this revelation of irreverence, 
but the darkness would not let me see ; I know he 
was terribly frightened, and presently I had good 
cause to wish I had dealt more patiently with his 
folly. 

We had been going for some time through the 
forest, and had Francisco been the best guide in the 
world, he would have been out of his reckoning in 
a dark wood, where the cattle paths crossed and 
recrossed each other in every direction. I had been 
endeavouring to steer some sort of a course through 
the wilderness of trees by making from one to another 
opening in their tops. At last I became uncertain 
and puzzled, and pulled up to strike a light and con- 
sult my compass. I knew that Juromenha, which 
we were making for, lay on the right bank of the 
Guadiana, which here forms the boundary between 
Portugal and Spain, and at a spot where the river 
is joined by an affluent from the north, and therefore 
I felt no doubt that we should reach our destination 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 219 

in course of time, seeing 'that by keeping either south 
or west till we came to either river, and following its 
course, we must, in time, come to Juromenha. It 
was to be my fate, however, to pass neither that 
night, nor any subsequent night, within the fortified 
walls of Juromenha. 

I pulled my horse up, and got off him to strike 
a match. It was a perfectly still night, with a con- 
tinual drizzle of rain. I had got out my compass, 
and I was searching in the dark for the match-box, 
when a noise, quite close to us, broke upon the 
silence of the night, and caused my guide to start 
and make a pious exclamation. 

" "What was that? " he asked in a voice trembling 
with terror. 

"Only a branch cracking. Don't be a fool, 
Francisco." 

I struck three or four of the wax matches at once 
to make a strong light, the better to see the face of 
the compass. The explosion and the sudden glare 
startled my horse, whose rein had been dropped by 
the guide in his own terror, and the loose horse set 
off at a hand gallop through the wood, pursued by 
Francisco. In a few minutes they were out of hear- 
ing. Then presently I heard the returning sound of 
horses' hoofs coming towards me. I shouted out 
loudly several times, but man and horses went on 
unheeding, clattering through the wood like the wild 



220 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

huntsman and his attendant demons. The ground 
was uneven, and I listened anxiously, fully expecting 
the chase to be brought to a sudden conclusion by 
the precipitation of the whole party into one of the 
many ravines that crossed the wood ; but fortune 
favoured them, and, finally, the sound grew less as 
they got farther, and I heard nothing more. 

It was a singularly unpromising situation. I did 
not know within two or three leagues where I was. 
During the two hours since we had been passing 
through the wood, we had not once seen the light of 
a cottage. I did not even know whether the track 
I was in led anywhere, or was a path used by pigs 
or cattle. Even should Francisco recover the horse 
and his senses, he would be unable to find me, for 
he would have lost his bearings and all knowledge 
of my whereabouts when the horse had doubled 
back, probably from having arrived at a wall or 
impassable ravine. So I sat down under the shelter 
of a chestnut-tree, struck a light, and discovered 
from my compass that the guide and horses had 
disappeared in a due northerly direction. This could 
certainly not lead to Juromenha, and it was useless 
to follow them. It was a warm, still night ; the 
rain did not reach me through the leaves of the 
tree. I fortunately held in my hand, when the 
horse bolted, the smaller of the two pair of saddle- 
bags that my horse carried, and these contained 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 221 

what experience had taught me never to travel 
without, a store of bread and a skin of wine. 

A man in a heavy cloak, long riding-boots, and 
carrying a pair of saddle-bags, is not in the condition 
to take a long walk in the dark, but he has all that 
he wants for a bivouac, and there is that — or, more 
correctly, there are those — about Portuguese beds 
and bedrooms which make the prospect of a night 
spent al fresco not altogether disagreeable. I took 
off my spurs, I wrapped my cloak round me, I ate 
some bread and wine, I leant back against the tree, 
and in a few minutes was fast asleep ; and I must 
admit that I have spent many a worse night than 
this short summer's one that I passed in a rain- 
storm in a Portuguese wood, with my back against a 
chestnut tree. 

I awoke very early, dreaming that I was at a con- 
cert whereat a solo performer on the violin drew so 
exquisitely plaintive and prolonged a note from his 
instrument, as filled me with admiration and woke 
me up. The musical sound was in my ears as I 
opened my eyes, and so distinctly, as to make me 
think for a moment that I was listening to the notes 
of a real instrument. It was a sound well enough 
known to every traveller in Portugal — the rubbing 
of the revolving wooden axletree of a cart in its 
groove — a noise which, heard close by, is by far the 
most ear-rending that I am acquainted with — a 



222 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

deafening sound, compounded of a shriek and a 
groan. The carters get accustomed to it, and the 
oxen are said to like it ; moreover, it is sovereign 
against ghosts, and frightens off wolves ; on which 
accounts, though a drop of oil would stop it, and 
though the friction must wear the cart and increase 
the labour of the oxen, the noise is endured, and 
even aggravated by rubbing the parts with lemon 
juice. But this hideous noise is much softened by 
distance, and heard from a mile or two off, it has a 
positively musical tone, not unlike the long-drawn 
legato notes of a violin. 

This was the sound that woke me in the early 
dawn. I walked towards the cart, not a little as- 
tonishing the driver by my sudden apparition. He 
had heard nothing of my guide and the horses, but 
he advised me to enquire at the neighbouring vil- 
lage, and to speak to the priest, as the person most 
likely to know ; and thither I took my way. 

The village of .Cruados lies six or seven miles 
north of Juromenha — so far had my guide led me 
astray. The people were already about, and the 
first thing I saw was the prints of the horses' hoofe 
in front of the priest's house ; but the padre him- 
self, apparently an important person in these parts, 
whose hospitable stable was no doubt well known 
to my runaway steed — the padre himself was from 
home. An old woman answered my knock with an 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 223 

"Ah, Jesus! " from an upper window, then let me 
in, and began to explain, with horrible volubility, 
how the guide had come in in the middle of the 
night. Coitado I — poor fellow ! — he was nearer 
dead than alive — he was frightened out of his senses. 
I had been spirited away ; he could see nothing ; he 
had heard awful sounds, and had fled for his life and 
his soul — and so forth. 

I strode towards the stables, filled with an 
immense anger against my faithless guide. He was« 
comfortably wrapped up in my rugs, lying in the 
wide manger — the groom's bed in a Portuguese inn 
— between the noses of the feeding horses. An un- 
friendly hand on his collar and a good shake woke 
him up. 

"Now," I said, "you insupportable idiot, what 
do you mean by leaving me last night in the middle 
of the wood? " 

" Is that really your Excellency/' the man said, 
"alive and well?" 

I gave him half-a-dozen sufficient proofs of my 
existence in the shape of additional shakes by the 
collar. 

" Why did you not answer when I called to yon, 
you rascal?" 

" Was that really and truly yourself that called ?" 

<c And what or who did you think it was." 

" Who did I think it was, your Excellency ? " 



224 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

" Yes ; who could you suppose it was but me?" 
" I thought," said my foolish guide, " I really 
thought it must be an alma do ontro mundo — a soul 
from the land of ghosts ! " 

This is, I am obliged to confess, the only adven 
ture that ever occurred to me in my travels through 
Portugal — an admission which, I trust, the reader 
will accept as an apology for making so long a story 
of so small a matter. Portugal is a safe country ; 
there are no brigands ; the only thieves keep inns, 
and the only formidable wild beasts live in them. 



CHAPTER X. 

Hostess at Monsaras a Shrew— Her Volubility and Use of Proverbs— 
Spanish Frontier — Line of Demarcation Distinct between Spanish 
and Portuguese Character— The Portuguese Language — Affectation 
of the Brazilians — Portuguese Share in " Pigeon English " — 
Portuguese a Living and Growing Language — An Instance; 
Origin of Word, Fajardismo — An Intelligent Swindle — Olivenca, 
once Portuguese, now Spanish — Radical and Important Difference 
between Spanish and Portuguese National Character and Institu- 
tions. 

I had always held the people of Northern Portugal 
to be the greatest talkers in the country, exceeding 
in loquacity the people of the province of Beira, who 
are yet not a silent race, and greater talkers than 
those of the Alemtejo, who seemed to me for the 
most part a down- spirited and listless people ; but 
in inexhaustible conversation the Portuguese of this 
south-eastern corner of the kingdom bear the palm. 
My guide was a great talker, the padre's house- 
keeper was a greater, and in the hostess of the inn 
at Monsaras, where we put up on the following 
night, I encountered a woman who was decidedly 
the superior of both. She was also a terrible shrew. 
Like Mr. Nichol's heroine, she 

" Made a golden tumult in the house," 

15 



226 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

and began very early indeed in the day. Her 
tongue was the last thing I heard at night, and it 
woke me prematurely next morning. Having heard 
the story of our misadventure of the previous day, 
she took upon herself, I know not why, to rate the 
guide soundly for his stupidity, telling him that he 
talked too much — an odd reproach from her ! She 
bid him remember that silence was golden; that 
pela bocca morreu o peixe — his mouth was the fish's 
death ; that na bocca cerrada nao entra moscarda — if 
his lips were shut, hornets could not fly down his 
throat. She advised him to foliar pouco e foliar bem> 
ou ter-te liaojpor ninguem — to talk little and talk well, 
or be counted as nobody. 

Proverbs are not common in Portuguese mouths, 
and I never heard any one who made such a trade 
in this second-hand species of wit as this hostess of 
Monsaras. Perhaps it is the close neighbourhood of 
Spain, and of that province of it where proverbs 
most abound, w^hich influences the people of this 
corner of the kingdom. Andalusia is only half-a- 
dozen leagues from us at Monsaras, and lower down, 
only the Guadiana separates Portuguese and Anda- 
lusians. 

There is a brisk contraband trade across tho 
river, though it is a broad, rapid, and treacherous 
stream ; the mountainous nature of the country on 
both sides, the vicinity of important trading sea- 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 227 

ports on tlio Spanish and the Portuguese sides of 
the Guadiana, make smuggling a tempting as well 
as a profitable speculation, so long as the two coun- 
tries continue the stupidity of separate tariffs. 

Notwithstanding this degree of intercourse, the 
line of demarcation is nearly as sharp here as I had 
already observed it to be on the northern frontier 
river of Spain and Portugal. There is that inherent 
antipathy between the two races which has so mar* 
vellously kept them apart, with but one short and 
violently- effected union, for so many long centuries 
— a circumstance by no means to be deplored in the 
interests of Portugal. " Spain and Portugal," a 
Portuguese gentleman once said to me, " though in 
such close contact at so many points, can never 
naturally coalesce; they are like two men sitting back 
to bach to each other who will never turn their heads." 

I expected to find Spanish words and a Spanish 
accent in the Portuguese of this district, but I found 
no trace of either. The language, to be sure, is 
different from that of the north, and this again 
differs from that of Lisbon and its neighbourhood ; 
but the difference is in no case so marked as between 
the English of Yorkshire and of Cornwall. In the 
northern provinces it is broad, in the south sharp in 
sound, and it is in the north that confessedly the 
purest idiom and purest accent are to be found. 
The sub-province of Beira Baixa is the Tuscauy of 



228 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Portugal, and the university town of Coimbra, set in 
its midst, is to Portuguese what Hanover is to Ger- 
mans, or Blois and Orleans to Frenchmen. The 
language spoken at Lisbon is by no means so pure, 
being a decidedly cockney Portuguese, marked by a 
lisping drawl, and some amount of affectation. 

The Brazilians claim to speak better Portuguese 
than the Portuguese themselves, just as our former 
colonists in North America claim to have taken with 
them the language of Shakespeare, as well as our 
whole available stock of virtue and intelligence. 
The claim can only be admitted in either case by 
allowing the claimants to set up their own stan- 
dards, and to judge by them. The European Por- 
tuguese affect great purism in language, and their 
claims to exclusive correctness are quite as ridicu- 
lous as our own and those of our American cousins. 
"The Brazilians talk a wretched Portuguese." A 
gentleman once remarked to me ; " they say Belleza 
instead of Belleza, as of course they ought to pro- 
nounce it. Now," he said, "what can be more 
thoroughly ridiculous than that ?" 

There is commonly repeated the error that Spanish 
and Portuguese are dialects of the same language, 
and that Portuguese is but a broken down Spanish. 
No one, of course, who had even a smattering of 
both languages — still less any one who had in- 
structed himself ever so slightly in the early history 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 229 

of the Peninsula, but would know that this was a 
mistake. Both tongues, it is true, are constructed 
from the ruins of the same great ancient language — 
like two fine buildings both built of stones hewn 
from the same quarry — but the result is strikingly 
dissimilar. The Portuguese is, next to English, 
perhaps the most flexible and adaptable lan- 
guage in Europe. For conversational purposes it 
is admittedly better suited than the more formal 
Castilian ; and if there happens to be not a single 
tolerable comedy in Portuguese and a hundred good 
ones in Spanish, it is only that the genius of Portu- 
guese literature has not lain in that direction. The 
earliest and one of the best of novels in the partly 
romantic and partly analytical style was written, 
more than three centuries ago, in Portuguese. 
Antonio Yieyra's famous satirical Arte de Furtar, 
the Art of Thieving, is" a masterpiece in its own 
picaresque style, and the same language which is 
so suitable to these humbler themes is the vehicle 
of one of the four great epics that have appeared 
since the new birth of letters. As a historical me- 
dium, Barros and Herculano have shown that it is 
nearly perfect. For travels it is admirably suited, 
admitting easily of every variation of narrative. 
The most singular recognition of the versatility of 
the Portuguese language is the remark I once 
heard from a dignitary of the Church — that it is 



230 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

the pleasantest of all languages to preach a sermon 
in. 

Of all the tongues of the Peninsula, though the 
Galician and the Catalan seemed at one time to 
promise well, only the Castilian and the Portuguese 
have crystallized themselves into true national lan- 
guages, possessing real literatures of their own and 
distinct characteristics ; and not one whit a less true 
and living language than the grand speech of Spain 
is that sjDoken by the smaller nation who, though 
numerically but a fourth of their neighbours, have 
spread their race and their language'"" far the more 
widely of the two over the face of the world. 

* The Portuguese must share with ourselves the responsibility 
for that most barbarous and ridiculous of all lingua francas, the 
" pigeon-English " of China. " Joss house," a temple, and " Joss,'' 
a god, are from the Portuguese Bios. The model word upon which the 
dialect seems to have been formed is the Portuguese sabe, he knows, 
or, do you know ? It no doubt got to be a constantly repeated ex- 
pletive and interrogation with those who were bungling on in the 
attempt to make themselves intelligible, and has become the 
" savey " of the modern pigeon-English. " Piecey," another indis- 
pensable word, is not from the English "piece," as is generally 
asserted, but from the Portuguese " pe^a," a much commoner and 
more serviceable word. It comes simply to express unity, and the 
" one " of the dialect is not the English " one," but obviously the 
indefinite article " um " in Portuguese. " One sheep " in pigeon- 
English is equivalent to a sheep ,- " one piecey sheep," a single or 
individual sheep. Even such reduplicated words as chow-chow and 
chop-chop, which give pigeon-English such a ludicrous and idiotic 
sound, are probably a trick of Portuguese speech. Vai logo is in 
Portuguese "go now;" vai logo logo, "go at once." Writers on 
the etymology of pigeon-English do not admit its full indebtedness 
to Portuguese, and oddly enough the word they do invariably trace 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 231 

Portuguese, like all true languages, is a living 
and growing one, lending to and borrowing from its 
neighbours, and even coining words afresh as it 
needs them. It has as curious a philological history 
as our own, and only requires a Trench or a Max 
Muller, or, may we say, a Gladstone, to make this 
history a most interesting one. 

As evidence of the readiness of the Portuguese to 
coin words, I will record one curious instance which 
has come to my own knowledge. There lives in 
Portugal an individual who has during several years 
been acquiring a certain fame of an unenviable kind. 
I could not do this gentleman a greater disservice 
than to refrain from stating that his name is Fajardo. 
Senhor Fajardo lives by his wits, and is not often 
restrained by any excessive scrupulosity from allow- 
ing full scope to his genius. As a preux chevalier 
d'industrie, he is perhaps without a rival anywhere. 
A tall, thin man, with a peculiar, cynical, but not 
disagreeable smile on his face — a face singularly like 
the prints of Talleyrand — he is well known in the 
streets of nearly every large town in Portugal. He 
is also not unacquainted with the interior of some of 
the gaols, but Fajardo has too many friends and too 



to that language is Mandarin from the Portuguese mandar, to send 
or order — one in command. It is however certainly an imported 
Indian word, mantrin, signifying a counsellor. 



232 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

much influence, and too lofty a genius, to be long 
restrained by iron bars. There is an element of 
humour about Fajardo's misdemeanors that quite 
redeems them from the doings of inferior criminals. 
A hundred stories circulate about the cleverness of 
this rogue. Some no doubt are the deeds of less 
notorious scoundrels than himself, but one particular 
anecdote has Fajardo for its acknowledged hero. 

At Lisbon it appears that it is the custom for 
farmers who have for sale fields of those large and 
valuable onions which are exported to foreign 
countries to wait upon the merchants or shippers 
for the purpose of disposing of their crop. One 
year, when onions were scarce and the price par- 
ticularly high, a farmer waited upon a principal 
merchant, and offered a small field for sale. The 
merchant, who had often before dealt with the 
farmer, offered him rather less than he asked, and 
the farmer went off. Next day came a person who 
represented himself to be the farmer's son. He 
brought a letter from the farmer, in which the 
merchant's offer was not accepted, but met half 
way. The merchant prepared to pay the usual 
earnest money, but the son, a stupid country fellow, 
refused to charge himself with the receipt of any 
money. As he was leaving, the merchant perceived 
a couple of large onions in his hand. 

" What are those ? " he asked. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 233 

" Never mind what they are," said the country- 
man, boorishly ; " that is my affair." 

But the merchant, seeing his way to another 
bargain, finally drew from the man that these 
particularly fine onions were samples of another 
much larger field belonging to his father, and that 
he was about to exhibit them to another dealer. 
The merchant insisted on being shown this field, 
and with some trouble persuaded the man to take 
him to a field five or six times as large as the one 
already bought, and filled with superlatively fine 
onions, he sitting on the wall of it while the mer- 
chant walked through and examined the crop. 

" I offer you a hundred pounds," said the mer- 
chant, astutely naming half the true price. 

" No," said the countryman, " I have been 
losing my time with you ; my father said Mr. So- 
and-so would give me one hundred and fifty pounds, 
and that I was to have a hundred pounds of it down 
as earnest." 

" Yery well, come to my office. The field is 
rather bigger than I thought, and your father and I 
are old customers. He shall have his own price." 

The countryman put the earnest-money in his 

bag. " Now I shall go to Mr. , and offer him 

the first field ; you can't want both." 

" Stop ! " said the merchant, " a bargain is a 
bargain ! you have already sold it to me." 



234 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

" No I have not ! " cried the farmer's son, losing 
his temper, and shouting at the top of his voice, 
" you gave me no earnest. I shall go and offer it 
to Mr. ," and he went to the door. 

" Come, come, my good fellow/ ' said the mer- 
chant, drawing him back into the office, "business 
is business — an honest man has but one word. 
Here, take the earnest, make your mark on this 
receipt and go your way." 

Grumbling, and half unwilling, and complaining 
of the badness of the bargain, the countryman 
suffered the coins to be counted into his hand. 

It was only when the merchant sent labourers to 
take up his crop, and found a rival doing the 
same thing; it was only when he learnt that the 
farmer never had a son ; it was only when some 
friend whispered the word Fajardo in his ear, that 
the merchant discovered that he, too, had fallen a 
victim to the terrible Fajardo. 

As a story, this has little point ; as an illustra- 
tion of Portuguese finesse, it is particularly instruc- 
tive. Fajardo' s swindles have all the complexity and 
ingenuity of a Hindoo or Chinese intrigue. Let the 
mystification be examined step by step, and the 
completeness and long pre-arrangement necessary to 
bring it about, the knowledge of all the circum- 
stances, the time and trouble necessary to inform 
himself of the particulars of the dealings of the 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 235 

merchant, the caution and the foresight, as of a 
skilful chess-player ; his assumption of the charac- 
ter of a simple countryman, his skilful reticence 
when the money is offered, his final triumphant 
sweeping of the whole stakes from the table. It 
is, the French say, tout tin drame, a little comedy of 
itself, with careful plot, brilliant dialogue, costume 
in character, and skilful denouement- — wanting indeed 
a moral and a "tag;" for the next thing that is 
heard of Fajardo is, that he is telling the story to a 
circle of admirers in a town a hundred miles away, 
and the victim, who had hoped to keep his simplicity 
a secret, finds the story related in detail in every 
newspaper he takes up. 

It is this man who has the honour of having his 
name enshrined in his country's language. Fajar- 
dismo, in the sense of an ingenious swindle, is 
intelligible in the remotest corner of Portugal and 
Brazil. In ten years it will be in every Portuguese 
dictionary; in a hundred, probably a puzzle to 
philologists, and a subject for correspondence in 
the " Athenaeum " and " Notes and Queries." I 
have, therefore, thought well to place on record my 
own personal knowledge of the origin of the word, 
not, indeed, anticipating that my Travels will be read 
a hundred years hence, but in the full confidence that 
some literary Fajardo will steal the story from me 
unacknowledged ; that some one else will do as much 



236 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

by him, and that thus the history of the word may be 
handed down, by a succession of philological pilferers, 
to posterity. The somewhat similar origin of the 
French word Bismarquer (with a not dissimilar signi- 
fication), is so connected with notorious historical 
occurrences, that it is never likely to be forgotten ; 
but Fajardo's performances are known to a smaller 
circle. 

Like the French language, Portuguese has been 
in peril of being academ,ized 9 and, like the French, it 
has escaped from the pedants with very little hurt. 
Ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
there have been attempts made by certain literary 
cliques to Latinize its structure, and to do away with 
all the character and richness it had acquired during 
the vicissitudes of its long growth. A certain Duarte 
de Leao, somewhere about the year 1600, had the 
wisdom to enunciate that the learned alone have the 
right to decide as to the currency of a word, and he 
protests solemnly against such barbarisms as espirito 
and esperar ; they should, he asserts, being taken 
from Latin, be spirito and sperar. He would have 
put down all those curious phrases that the people 
have acquired from their contact with so many 
various nationalities — such Hebraisms as riquezas e 
mats riquezas, loucura das loucuras, and so forth; 
such quaint terms of speech as they picked up from 



TRAVELS IJSf PORTUGAL. 237 

the Arabic, like Oxala, would to Allan ; such words 
as they have got from Indian sources, as Zumbada, 
an act of reverence ; Chatim, a merchant, and Lascar, 
which they have handed on to ourselves. Wherever 
the Portuguese have gone, they have brought back 
riches for their language, as well as wealth for 
themselves. Even the barbarous dialects of South 
America have yielded rich prize, and I have heard it 
said that a good Portuguese dictionary should con- 
tain at least two thousand words of Brazilian origin. 
A very few of them, however, are current in daily 
speech. 

Then, as I have said, the Portuguese have lent 
as well as borrowed, a curious instance of which is 
connected with the well-known history of the old 
English word Aumbrey, or Almery — the receptacle 
for vessels from the altar. This had been most in- 
geniously and learnedly derived from almary, a word 
signifying cupboard in some Indian languages. Every 
sound philologist of course knows that this is non- 
sense, and that Almery comes from the good classic 
armarium; but it is not, perhaps, so generally 
known that the Indian " almary " is the Portuguese 
Almario, a cupboard, with of course the same deri- 
vation as our English Aumbrey. 

I am afraid the classicists of Leao's time did 
succeed in banishing some good Arabic words — the 
Arabic Chafariz, a fountain, for instance, once in 



238 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

universal use, is now hardly more than a provincial- 
ism, having been replaced in polite circles by the 
Latin fonte. On two or three occasions, I have 
thought I had stumbled in remote districts upon a 
true Arabic word lost to common speech, and once 
I was able to make sure I was right. ■ It was in the 
mountains of Beira, near the famous cathedral city 
of Yiseu, a wild, roadless country, heath-covered and 
with long hill ridges extending to the horizon's edge. 
Not a roof, not a green field nor a tree was visible 
for miles together ; and every now and then a covey 
of partridges, as large as grouse, starting with noisy 
wings from the horse's feet, made the resemblance 
to a Scotch moor still more perfect. It was in this 
wilderness, whose contact with the outer world must 
be very slight and very rare, that, having lost my 
road, I accosted a brown -cloaked shepherd tending 
a flock of goats and sheep, and holding up a new 
crown, in my hand, offered it to him, if he would 
guide me to Yiseu. 

" Is it kasmil ? " said the man, looking suspi- 
ciously at the coin. 

" Is it what ? " I asked ; for the word is not 
Dictionary Portuguese. 

" Is it kasmil ? Is it good ? " 

" Take it and try," I said, putting the money 
into his hand. " Show me the way to Yiseu and you 
shall have another piece as soon as I see the houses. " 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 239 

He girded up his loins in the most literal sense, 
having but one garment, a long brown cloak reach- 
ing to the ankles, and piloted me safely to my des- 
tination, proving himself a very competent guide 
and an agreeable companion. 

It was not till long afterwards that I found the 
word kasmil mentioned and truly explained in an old 
Spanish author. The word signifies pare or current, 
and comes from the Arabic kadim, ancient. Soldos 
kadzimis or kazmis, are silver pieces of pure metal, 
and the phrase often occurs in ancient Peninsular 
deeds and charters. The word perhaps fell into 
disuse when the tamperings of the Kings of 
Portugal with the currency of the realm did away 
with the propriety of its application to coin issuing 
from the Eoyal Mint. 

To the question often asked, Is Portuguese a 
difficult language ? I should be inclined to answer 
that it is the most difficult to an Englishman of all 
the languages of Southern Europe, pronunciation 
and idiom alike presenting greater impediments to 
an individual of the Teutonic races than either 
Spanish or Italian. There are freaks of syntax, 
such as a declension of the infinitive mood. It is 
the only Roman language which has retained the 
true Latin pluperfect of the indicative, and it 
retains, likewise, the use of the gerund. As to pro- 
nunciation, it is a perfect mine of difficulties ; it 



240 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

possesses no fewer than sixteen different diphthongs, 
of which six are more or less nasal. There are 
sounds in it which cannot be matched even in 
Russian, and one diphthong in Portuguese exists 
nowhere else, it is said, except in Chinese. 

It is not to be wondered at, then, that English- 
men have been known to live thirty or forty years 
in Portugal, and speak Portuguese very much as the 
Frenchman of the London stage speaks English. 
The natives find, of course, precisely analogous 
difficulties in speaking English ; fluently, indeed, 
they often speak, but it is difficult to say how badly. 
It was a long time a mystery to me how an intel- 
ligent people like the Portuguese could succeed in 
making such a hash of a language which foreigners 
as a rule profess to find easy, and which Italians 
often speak very well. I at last found the clue to 
the mystery in a bookseller's shop in Lisbon, in the 
shape of a conversation-book, from which my Por- 
tuguese friends had, I now perceived, largely 
borrowed. A volume on the difference in the genius 
of the English and Portuguese languages would not 
tell so much as the few extracts which I give below 
from this instructive little work.* 



* I transcribe exactly from the English preface of the "Nova 
Guia" 

" A choice of familiar dialogues, clean of gallicisms, and despoiled 
phrases, it was missing yet to studious portugnese and brazilian 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 241 

To resume the story of my ride from Elvas. 
Leaving the priest's house, we rode towards the 
south, passing Juromenha, a fortified town, and I 
abandoned for lack of time my intention to cross the 

Youth ; and also to persons of other nations, that wish to know the 
Portuguese language. We sought all we may do, to correct that 
want, composing and divising the present little work in two parts. 
The first includes a greatest vocabulary proper names by alpha- 
betical order ; and the second f ourty three Dialogues adapted to the 
usual precisions of the life. For that reason we did put, with a 
scrupulous exactness, a great variety own expressions to english and 
Portuguese idioms ; without to attach us selves (as make some 
others) almost at a literal translation ; translation what only will 
be for to accustom the Portuguese pupils, or foreign, to speak very 

bad any of the mentioned idioms We expect then, who the 

little book (for the care what we wrote him, and for her typgraphi- 
cal correction) that may be worth the acceptation of the studious 
persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate him 
particularly." 

The dialogues follow the Portuguese idiom still more closely, and 
are for that reason still more valuable to the foreign student — hardly 
so much so, perhaps, to the Portuguese. For instance, " Dialogue 
18. — Foe to eide a hoese " is a true rendering of Para montar a 
cavallo. " He not sail know to march, he is pursy, he is foundered," 
when spoken of the same animal is, to be sure, a slight departure 
from our English idiom, but still intelligible. " Dont you are 
ashamed to give me a jade as like ? " " Take care that he not give 
you a foot's kick." " Go us more, fast." " Never i was seen a so 
much bad beast," are all racy and forcible rather than common 
phrases in English mouths. " Let us prick," recalls Spenser and 
the " Faerie Queen." " Pique strongly make to march him " is also 
good and new, and we have no exact equivalent for the idiom. In 
another dialogue on shooting, occurs the following. " Question : 
There is it some game in this wood ? Answer : Another time there 
was plenty some black beasts, and thin game, &c." This is puzzling ; 
another time is outra vez — formerly ; thin game is caca miuda—> 
partridges, hares, and rabbits, but black beasts, meaning deer, is 

1G 



242 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Guadiana, and visit the Spanish town of Olivenca, 
which, and the transriverain strip of country, was 
once, and should still be, Portuguese. Taken with 
the assistance of Napoleon's troops in 1801, it was 
most solemnly stipulated at the great National 
Congress of 1815 that Spain was to restore it. No 
Spanish Government has ever yet found the shadow 
of an excuse for keeping the town and territory 
during their sixty years of wrongful occupation. 
It is one among the many causes which keep alive the 
salutary bitterness of Portugal towards her neigh- 
bour. 

It will always be a subject of regret to me that 
1 was unable to visit Olivenca, which has now 
for three-fourths of a century ceased to be Portu- 
guese, and to judge for myself whether the people, 

beyond my interpretation. An English laundress is to be told, of a 
white waistcoat, " who that be too washed, too many soaped." The 
lively author of these dialogues, confident as he may appear, is quite 
aware that linguistic studies have their difficulties, — " Do you speak 
French ? " occurs in one dialogue. " Some times — though i flay it 
yet." This is surely an admirable expression. No less forcible 
word will do justice to the sort of English spoken by most Portu- 
guese, and the English in Portugal no doubt do similar violence to 
the native idiom. 

Since the first publication of these Travels, Senhor M. Lewtas, 
the well-known Lisbon librairiste and an excellent literary authority, 
has told me that the Nova Guia is a Brazilian production, and was 
never much circulated in Lisbon. The Portuguese he maintains to 
be good linguists. So far as French and Spanish are concerned they 
are so, but, with submission to Senhor Lewtas, I do not think they 
are so proficient in the Teutonic languages. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 243 

like the Alsatians, are loyal to the country of their 
forefathers. The Portuguese agree that this is the 
case. It would be a curious study ; and it is one of 
the many deficiencies of these Travels, that I cannot 
enter in them the record of my observations on this 
pseudo- Spanish soil, but must build up my theories 
from the wrong side of the Guadiana. 

If Olivenca be governed no worse than the 
majority of other Spanish towns, it will probably be 
better governed than when it was Portuguese. Muni- 
cipal government in Spain is, as is well known, the 
best sort of government, and has often been nearly the 
only government, prevailing in that country. Bad 
as it is — for it is not without corruption — it is better 
than burghers' rule in Portugal. The mad imbe- 
cility of the central Spanish Government has, as 
all students of Peninsular history know, always been 
arrested on the brink of anarchy by the comparative 
respectability of the provincial middle and lower 
classes. They have acted like the weighted keel of 
an over crank vessel, and steadied the ship of state 
as she was heeling over with too much sail on. 

There is just this difference between Portuguese 
and Spaniards — the larger nation is capable of cohe- 
sion only of small numbers ; the other, of the whole 
people. It is not easy to say why, but all history 
shows that this is the case. Like some chemical 
substances which crystallize in a great single mass 



244 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

while others form a hundred crystals each coherent 
and perfect in itself, Portugal has always been a 
nation, though a small one ; Spain always virtually, 
even under its most despotic rulers and at its 
greatest, an agglomeration of municipalities. When 
federalism was made a " cry " by the extreme party 
in Spain, it by no means possessed the terrors for 
moderate men that might have been supposed. Span- 
ish experience of district rule was not unfavourable. 
In Portugal, I am inclined to think, the very reverse 
would be the case, and communism in any form would 
probably have a peculiar horror for a people who 
are so intimately acquainted with the shameless and 
almost universal corruption, the unblushing bribery, 
the petty intrigue and nepotism which reign in the 
Town Councils in Portugal. 

The little kingdom is, notwithstanding, so well 
governed on the whole, and so generally contented, 
that little fear need have been entertained for its 
safety and prosperity, had it not been for this foul con- 
tagion, extending through one whole important class 
of the community ; here, too, as elsewhere, there are 
interested andignorant menenoughtomakethemselves 
the apostles and the party of Internationalism and Eed 
Republicanism, and there are already signs that it is 
time for the nation to set its house in order while 

; That two-Landed engine at the door 



Stands ready to smite once and smite no more.' 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 245 

Spain struck down and splintered into a con- 
geries of communes would still perhaps be — poli- 
tical prejudice apart — a not ill-governed country ; 
but if such a fate should ever overtake Portugal, 
may Heaven save her ! Anarchy would be com- 
plete. 



CHAPTER XL 

Juromcnha — Desolate Country — Last Stand of Moors of Portugal 
Made in this Region — Final Wars of Moors and Portuguese 
Treacherous and Bloody — Sketch of History of the Great Portu- 
guese Home Crusade — Names of Different Sorts of Christian 
Marauding 'Expeditions Preserved in Charters to Towns and 
Convents — Mertola — Final and Crowning Misadventure of the 
Guide Francisco. 

Jueomenha lies on a cliff overlooking the Guadiana, 
which here narrows and runs in a rapid stream. 
Above the town the banks of the river are low and 
sandy, and the river broad, shallow and fordable in 
places for nearly three miles. The fortifications of 
Juromenha, therefore, if they be well furnished with 
artillery (a point as to which in Portugal it is pru- 
dent not to be curious) would command the passage 
in case of an attack from Spain. 

Following the course of the river to the sea, 
through a dreary district, and crossing the river, 
which near Monsaras, runs through wholly Portu- 
guese territory, to Mourao, I slept there, and 
reached Moura, due south of it, the following day ; 
always passing through the same desolate country, 
relieved here and there by some signs of cultivation, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 247 

but for the most part cistus-covered, treeless, and 
arid. A monotonous and tiresome ride, not made 
more agreeable by the overpowering heat of the 
weather, and by the fact of my having got a slight 
attack of ague at Mourao, which, though going no 
further than headache and a feeling of oppression, 
warned me to hasten to the end of my journey. 

As the small and ancient town of Serpa is reached, 
the mountains grow more rugged, and the valleys 
richer in cultivation,, 

It was in the country which I had been passing 
through for the last day or two, that some of the 
battles took place in the long crusade which ended 
in the expulsion of the Moors from Portugal. It 
was in these fastnesses that the Infidels made their 
last stand ; in this difficult country, with a broad 
and rapid river in their front, and behind them the 
yet unconquered Moorish districts of Andalusia and 
Spanish Estremadura. This trans- Guadianian dis- 
trict had indeed been pierced long before by the 
first and most enterprising of the Portuguese 
monarch s. Serpa itself, Mertola (a little to the 
.south), Juromenha, and other strongholds, as far as 
Truxillo, in Spain, were wrested from the Moors by 
the great Portuguese conqueror ;* but the district 
was regained by the Moslems, and did not become 

* According to both Christian and Moorish chronicles, though 
they differ by ten years as to the date of this extensive raid. 



248 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Christian till the best part of a century after- 
wards. 

The fighting that was done towards the end of 
the wars in these outlying corners of the monarchy, 
was bloody and cruel. The day of chivalry had 
gone by. If its influence had ever done much to 
mitigate the ferocity on either side, or to diminish 
the treachery of Moors and Christians, all which is 
very doubtful, that influence had ceased to prevail. 
Moura is supposed to owe its name to the treachery 
with which a Moorish maiden was slain, or driven 
to suicide, after the foul murder of her lover by a 
Portuguese soldier, who dressed himself in his habit, 
and so entered and took the town with his followers. 
The legend, notwithstanding its popularity, pos- 
sesses no particular flavour of authenticity, and the 
derivation has obviously no sort of probability. Such 
legends as this, whether they be true or false, like 
that of the treacherous capture of Santarem by the 
Portuguese during a truce, and the cruel stratagem 
which gained Evora, faithfully reflect the altogether 
unchivalrous nature of the struggle, which was be- 
coming embittered by religious hatred and bigotry 
on both sides. 

It has been my habit in my travels in Portugal 
to make a point of inquiring into the existence of 
old charters, deeds, and other documents in the 
various towns. Such ancient muniments are often 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 249 

preserved with scrupulous care by the chapters in 
cathedral cities, the priests of parish churches, and 
the municipal bodies of the town. Some jealousy 
— -a very natural and proper feeling — has often been 
exhibited ; but with a little management I have 
almost always succeeded in getting access to the 
deed-box or muniment chamber. 

I had hoped to find these trans- Guadianian towns 
peculiarly rich in ancient documents, and so they 
doubtless are, but my inquiries in every case were 
checked. Either the near neighbourhood of Spain 
made them suspicious of a stranger, or they had been 
careless keepers of their muniments, and had nothing 
to show. Inquire where I would, at Moura, Mourao, 
or Mertola, I found nothing. 

The tenure of land, originally for the most part 
vested, as it was taken from the Infidel, in the church, 
or in the Militant Orders of the Templars and 
Knights of Jerusalem who fought in the van of the 
great home crusade, might certainly have been ex- 
pected to be recorded more distinctly in the case of 
the comparatively recent endowments in these dis- 
tricts than elsewhere. At Mertola I was told of a 
transfer deed, dated 1302, and at Moura of a charter 
of King Sancho, who died in 1211, alluding to the 
original grant of a tract of land on the left bank of 
the Guadiana, but these documents are, with many 
others, hidden away in the Lisbon State Paper Ofb'ce. 



250 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Cursory as has been my study of these old Por- 
tuguese charters, transfers, and royal grants, and 
incompetent as I am, in many ways, to speak with 
authority, I have seen enough of them in various 
parts of Portugal to perceive what a mine of histori- 
cal wealth they afford — a mine, too, which has been 
as yet hardly at all worked. Herculano's narrative 
of the early years of the monarchy, admirable as it 
is, is founded mainly upon the chroniclers, Christian 
and Mahometan, neither of whom can be considered 
quite honest. His history is like the summing up by 
a good judge of the evidence of a host of untrust- 
worthy witnesses. It is good, thoughtful history, 
and the author does not sin on the side of credulity ; 
but the reader cannot accept a narration in which 
the historian is himself too honest to put his whole 
faith ; and when Herculano leaves off at the end of 
the thirteenth century, all is doubt and confusion. 

The history of mediaeval Portugal is peculiarly 
interesting as being to a great degree complete in 
itself, as being less complicated with the affairs of 
other countries than perhaps that of any European 
kingdom, and yet as containing in itself all the ele- 
ments of change, and all the causes of vicissitude, 
which have presided at the rise and fall of other 
states. Feudalism, or rather the germs of it, which 
grew into a sort of national clanship ; the great 
faith-feud which succeeded to what was, at first, a 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 251 

race-feud — a struggle between two nations for do- 
mination ; then the usurpations of the church, and 
the prudent temporizing of the rulers of the country 
with the Court of Rome ; their wise absorption of the 
Military Orders into the state ; the balance of the 
various estates of the realm — all this would make 
most instructive reading, treated not, of course, as 
a patriotic Portuguese can only treat his country's 
history, but from the point of view of a scientific 
and impartial foreign historian. 

In travelling through the parts of Portugal 
which I had hitherto visited — the northern and 
north-eastern frontier — and now through this long- 
contested border land of what was once the Moorish 
kingdom of Al Gharb, and is now shrunk in dimen- 
sion to the modern province of Algarve, — in passing 
through this range of country, with the ruins of 
Moorish and Christian strongholds on every pro- 
minent height, one is singularly impressed with the 
obstinacy of the long fight which was maintained 
for centuries among the defiles, the forests, and by 
the river fords and mountain passes. It was like 
our Scotch and Welsh border fighting — a war of 
raids and border frays, of sieges of walled towns 
and strong places. Pitched battles were rare ; the 
Saracens were superior in cavalry, but they could 
not withstand the shock of the Portuguese infantry, 
and avoided encounters in the open field. 



252 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Wherever the shifting border-line lay, it was 
crossed regularly year after year, when the crops 
were ready to be harvested, by whichever party felt 
itself the stronger ; and the ground gained on these 
occasions by the Portuguese finds record in the 
various existing deeds, grants, and charters. For 
this reason, these ancient documents furnish a far 
more true and lively picture of the manners and 
history of those times than the half-romantic annals 
of the mediaeval chroniclers. 

The mere variety in the nomenclature of these 
marauding expeditions is, of itself, an evidence of 
the long continuance of the warlike mode of life 
in mediaeval Portugal. We learn from the old docu- 
ments how many different ways were adopted by 
the Portuguese of carrying death and destruction 
among their border enemies, and of saving them- 
selves from similar incursions. In ancient charters 
such words Azaria, Hoste, Appelido, Fronteira, and 
Anaduva, are frequently met with, each one of 
which tells its own wild tale of a warlike people 
inured to arms, but never ceasing to till the soil. 
The Azaria was the name given to an expedition 
made into the enemy's lines, when the farmers yoked 
their oxen to their carts, and carrying axes on their 
shoulders, ventured into the enemy's country to cut 
firewood. The Azaria was the band who accom- 
panied the waggoners and wood-cutters, armed with 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 253 

the aza, or woodman's axe. Land in Portugal is 
still held by the grant made to the captain who 
would lead an Azaria into a dangerous tract. 

The Aduana appears to have been an expedition 
of working men to repair fortifications, though its 
apparent derivation from adua, a herd, would seem 
to imply some connection with cattle-lifting. The 
Hoste was an expeditionary force, a small army, 
taking the field regularly. The Ajppelido, as its 
name implies, was a sudden call to arms of the whole 
population of a town or commune. These Appelidos 
were often made necessary at a moment's notice by 
the sudden irruption of the enemy ; and it is more 
than once related how the people would be roused 
from their beds by the fearful cry of Mouros na 
terra ! Moradores as armas ! " The Moors are on 
us ; to arms ! to arms ! " 

These picturesque calls to arms were apparently 
not always justified by the actual presence of an 
enemy, and were, it may be presumed, sometimes 
made to gratify a private pique against a neighbour, 
or a desire for his flocks and herds ; for it is stipu- 
lated in a charter given to the town of Freixo d'Es- 
pada Cinto, in 1098 — one of the earliest of Portu- 
guese documents — that the knights are to join the 
Appelido, cum opus fuerit, when necessary, sed non 
transeant aquas Durii nisi cum rege, " but they are 
not to cross the Douro unless the king be with 



254 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

them ; " whereby it would seem to be implied that 
these persons were in the habit of taking the law 
into their own hands, and harrying their neighbours 
without provocation. Another charter, given nearly 
a hundred years later, lays down, evidently with the 
same purpose, that the people of Folgosa are not to 
form an Appelido, nisi ergo super vos venerint Mauros* 
vel gens aliena — " except upon an actual invasion of 
Moors or Spaniards. ■' 

The Fossado was a raid of a more actively offen- 
sive character made into the enemy's country com 
mao poderosa, "with the strong hand," to cut down 
and appropriate his harvest and his fruit, and to 
carry off his sheep and his cattle. The Fronteira 
was a marauding excursion primarily to guard the 
frontier line, and secondarily to rob, murder, and 
destroy whenever the chance offered. All these 
varieties of raids and expeditions were, as might be 
supposed, the origin of the tenure of land, — the 
circumstances being often fully and exactly recited 
in grants and charters. 

At Mertola, on the right side of the Guadiana, 
and within a few leagues of its mouth, the river 



* The critics must not accuse me of false syntax. In Portuguese 
and Spanish the nominative plural is formed from the Latin accu- 
sative, and with proper names the mediaeval Latinists follow the 
vernacular form. Gens aliena are here the people of Leon. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 255 

begins to be practicable for large boats; this fine 
river, a deep and sluggish stream through a great 
part of its earlier course is interrupted in its navi- 
gability as it flows through the gorges of the Abe- 
Iheira range of hills between Serpa and Mertola by 
a series of falls and rapids. South of Mertola, a 
strong place in Mediseval times, with, as usual, 
a Moorish castle on its tallest hill, the country is 
still mountainous, the hills bare-topped, but with 
signs of cultivation more frequent in the valleys. 

I was tired of my stumbling and lazy horse, 
and my guide, like myself, was suffering from ague. 
In a country where marsh malaria prevails, even to 
so slight a degree as it does in Portugal, all one's 
trifling disorders, one's colds and headaches, are apt 
to hamx about one in an intermittent or a^ueish 
form. One is slightly feverish and uneasy at one 
time of the day, listless at another, and chilly at a 
third. Englishmen in these times fortunately scarcely 
know what the old words " tertian " and " quartan " 
mean, and English travellers in the Peninsula 
are puzzled what to make of their symptoms at 
first, but they soon learn the virtues of quinine, and 
if they are wise, never go without it. 

Francisco who, as I have related, was not difficult 
in the matter of faith, had absolutely none in the 
bitter powder of which I made him take large doses. 
He had become very sulky, and it was partly my own 



256 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

fault. Two days before, we had had to cross a deep 
and narrow stream, and disliking to get as wet as he 
inevitably would if he remained in the saddle, he 
persisted, against my strong advice, in trying to 
cross dry-foot at a place where a fallen and rotting 
tree had nearly spanned the channel. His horse 
followed mine through the water. When I had got 
safely over I watched him, fully expecting to see 
the tree bend with his weight and let him down into 
the water ; but almost the reverse of this happened, 
for Francisco, getting upon the trunk, safely reached 
the middle of the stream, when his weight slowly 
forced down the branches which all but reached to 
my side of the stream, and the tree-top dipping into 
the stream and catching the full force of the current 
suddenly broke off short, and as the tree was still 
firmly attached to its twisted roots, their strain lifted 
the trunk, thus relieved of its top weight, three or 
four feet into the air, and with it the terrified Fran- 
cisco. 

He had been cautiously and very skilfully creep- 
ing along the narrow trunk on hands and knees with 
so knowing an expression of countenance that I made 
sure he would get over safely, when, as our children's 
books say, " Lo and behold !" he was suddenly jerked 
up into the air in this astonishing manner. The jerk, 
too, as ill luck would have it, disturbed his equili- 
brium, and in his scuffle to maintain it, he remained 



TRAVELS W PORTUGAL. 257 

hanging across the tree trunk, suspended helplessly 
by the middle, like the sign of the Golden Fleece 
over a mercer's shop, while his hat floated gaily down 
the stream. 

I laughed to that extent that I could not for a 
moment get off my horse. When I recovered I 
called to him to wriggle himself back to the other 
side, which he did very successfully, with fearful 
muscular exertion and contortions of face, manag- 
ing to throw himself on the muddy bank and 
clasp it with outstretched hands and feet, and 
only slipping back into the water up to his 
knees. 

His first proceeding was to pursue his hat and 
angle for it with a long stick from the bank ; his 
next to beg me, with tears in his voice, to bring 
the horses over and let him ride across over the 
ford. All this being done, and Francisco on the 
right side of the river, I lost no time in ad- 
ministering to him a very stiff dose of brandy and 
quinine. 

We rode on our way, but Francisco was in a bad 
humour. It was partly my having laughed at him, 
partly, I believe, the bitter taste of the medicine, 
for if I looked at him during the rest of that day, 
he would make a horribly wry face as if he still tasted 
the quinine. 

" I will never touch that stuff of your Excel- 

17 



258 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

lency's in all my life again," lie said, after riding by 
me in silence for an hour. 

" What stuff— the brandy ?" 

" ~No 9 those pozes do inferno — those devil's pow- 
ders, which you put into it ! 



?? 



CHAPTER XII. 

Boat Journey down the Guadiana to Villa Nova — Scenery and Botany 
of Province of Algarve — The Locust Tree — Boatmen s Stories 
— The Ginet — Mr. Mason's Successful Mining at San Domingo — 
'Embark for Lisbon in a Trading Schooner — The East Wind ; its 
Bad Reputation — Proverbs — The "Bock" of Lisbon; Why so 
called — Viseu — Its Famous Pictures — Gran Vasco — Discussion as 
to his Authorship of Pictures ascribed to him — The Province of 
Beira — Its Unsophisticated Inhabitants — Their Singular Dress — 
Their Probable Origin— Remarks on Travel Writing— Culture 
and Good Manners and Nature of the People — A Theory Un- 
supported by Facts — A Portuguese Priest — His Stories about 
Wolves — Diminution of Wolves in the Country — Good and In- 
offensive Character of the Priest — His Views on Sport — Through 
Oporto Northward — Monastic Church of Leca do Balio — Des- 
cription of a Pine Forest — Barcellos — A Portuguese School In- 
spection — Farming — Strong Traces of Roman Farm System — 
" Green Wine ; " its Taste and Good Effects — Recapitulation of 
Impressions of the Portuguese, as a People. 

A sulky guide, a lazy horse, and a slight attack of 
ague, all indisposed me to continue my journey on 
horseback along the course of the frontier river, the 
Guadiana, towards the southern coast of Portugal. 
I therefore got rid of both horse and guide at Mer- 
tola, sending back my guide and selling the horse to 
a farmer at the inn. 



260 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

A little south of Mertola, the Guadiana, which 
for some sixty miles had flowed between Portuguese 
banks, again forms the boundary between Spain and 
Portugal, and continues to separate the two king- 
doms, till it enters the sea at the town and harbour 
of Villa Real de Sant' Antonio. I hired a boat at 
Mertola, and was taken down the river to Villa Real, 
a most pleasant and luxurious expedition. I have 
seldom so enjoyed a boating excursion. My three 
boatmen were tall, slight, Moorish-looking men, very 
lively and communicative. The banks of the river, 
down which we glided with great rapidity, are in the 
upper part of its course exceedingly lovely, and, in 
places, richly cultivated. The maize and wheat 
fields of the north and centre of Portugal are re- 
placed in Algarve (we enter this small province a 
little below Mertola) by orchards of figs and of 
almond trees ; waste land is covered not invariably 
by cistus and heath, as in the central provinces, nor 
by gorse and broom, as in northern Portugal, but 
occasionally by a dense undergrowth of the dwarf 
palm of Portugal. 

The locust-tree, in shape, size and appearance 
like an apple-tree, but evergreen and very orna- 
mental, is a marked feature of the landscape in 
Algarve. The horn-shaped pod, with its sweetish, 
starchy contents, is a valuable food in southern Por- 
tugal, and is sold at fruit-stalls, as nuts and apples 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 261 

are with us in England, in every town and village of 
the kingdom. In a dry climate like this of Algarve, 
where if water fails, all cereals must fail too, what a 
boon and blessing must this tree be ! It is poor 
food to live on, my boatmen told me, but it is abun- 
dant enough, even in very dry years, to stave off a 
famine. A single tree, they told me, has been 
known to produce twenty arrobas — more than 600 
lbs. I ate a handful once, to try to realize the feel- 
ings of the Prodigal Son — for it is as nearly certain 
as can be that the " husks " of the New Testament 
were the fruit of the locust-tree — and I thought he 
was better off than he deserved. In the Levant, 
where these trees are common, I learnt to call them 
locust-trees, which is a foolish misnomer founded on 
the theory of their having been the piece de resistance 
in St. John the Baptist's fare. All over the Penin- 
sula the tree is called Algaroba, which is from the 
Arabic, Kharoub, so that, after all, in our English 
trade name of Carob bean we have stumbled on 
something like its true name. 

Lying back on a heap of palm leaves and empty 
sacks, with a mat stretched overhead to keep off the 
sun, and gliding swiftly with a following wind 
through the gorges of the Algarve mountains, I 
came to the conclusion that there is no locomotion 
in the world so agreeable as this boat travelling 
through pleasant scenery : but then in such river 



262 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

voyages it is absolutely necessary to have the stream 
with one. 

My boatmen were good-tempered, companionable 
people, telling me all about their brothers, sisters, 
wives, and children, and singing songs (which I could 
not understand) in very dismal strains. They told 
me wonderful stories of huge water-snakes, which 
came up the river from the sea, and at night-time 
attacked the sleeping boatmen ; and of a breed of 
wolves in the mountains of the interior, so large that 
one could kill and carry off a yearling heifer ! I set 
down to the same category of fable a description 
they gave me of a cat-like creature, known as rdbo- 
longo, that lived in the woods, very fierce and strong 
enough to kill a dog, but which, if caught young, 
would get tame enough to follow its master about, 
and would rid the house of rats and mice, and the 
garden of snakes and lizards. When I expressed 
strong doubts on this matter, they assured me it 
was the commonest thing in the world, and if I 
would wait till we arrived at a place called Alcoutim, 
I should have proof positive of their having told me 
the literal truth. What was my astonishment, on 
returning from a stroll through the town that after- 
noon, to see a girl near the landing-place, holding in 
her arms an animal like a huge spotted ferret. It 
was a genet, for which the true Portuguese name is 
gineto, but it had every claim to its local appellation, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 263 

rabo-longo, or long-tail, as its tail was quite as long 
as its head and body put together. The animal was 
quite tame, and even playful, and being set on the 
ground, no more tried to escape than a dog or cat 
would. It allowed me to handle it, and except for 
its not very pleasant musky smell, seemed as pretty 
and desirable a pet as could be. 

Villa Eeal, on the sandy estuary of the Guadiana, 
has within twenty years become of commercial im- 
portance. At San Domingo a copper mine has long 
been known to exist ; but as it was also known to 
contain but a very small percentage of metallic cop- 
per, that is, less than four parts in a hundred of ore, 
no prudent person would meddle with it. The ore 
is a sulphuret of copper, and contains fifty per cent 
of sulphur. Herein lay the undetected richness of 
the ore. An English gentleman bought the mine, 
and the ore is largely exported to the smelters of 
Great Britain, who extract both copper and sul- 
phur. It is now by far the richest mine in Por- 
tugal. The proprietor constructed a railway to 
Pomerao on the Guadiana, eleven miles from the 
mine, and there the ore is loaded. About six hun- 
dred British steamers and sailing ships annually 
enter and leave the port of Villa Eeal, where for- 
merly a dozen coasting vessels sufficed for the 
whole trade in tunny, sardines, and dried figs. 
Mr. Mason is commonly said to derive £80,000 a 



264 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

year from this mine — a fair reward for his skill, 
energy, and intelligence ; and if the Portuguese 
government had not made him Baron of Pomerao, 
the moral of his history would be complete. 

Anxious to escape a longer stay in the country 
which had already given me an ague, I took a pas- 
sage, not without difficulty and compliance with 
endless formalities, in a Portuguese schooner bound 
for Lisbon, and at daybreak on the following morning 
we were dropping down with the tide to cross the 
river bar. A fresh breeze was blowing from the 
north-east, and our captain, showing no fear of being 
embayed if the wind chopped, boldly made for Cape 
St. Vincent, eighty or ninety miles to the west, 
keeping at a distance of little more than a league 
from land, assuring me that if he were to steer to 
the south we should lose the wind. 

"We passed the prettily situated town of Tavira 
before breakfast, and in the course of the day Faro, 
the capital of Algarve, with its ancient castle and 
ruined houses, and its groves of dark green trees — 
oranges and carob trees, as far as I could make out 
with the captain's glass. Early next morning we 
" made "' Cape St. Vincent, and were soon out of 
sight of land, the wind having veered completely and 
blowing a pleasant breeze a little north of west, and 
we were making a " long board " to the westward. 
It was like coming into a new world, to exchange the 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 265 

hot east wind that had accompanied me since leaving 
Juromenha for the breeze charged with the fresh salt 
spray of the Atlantic. In every part of the Penin- 
sula the east wind is detestable, and in none more so 
than in Portugal, where, in addition to its own de- 
merits, it comes charged with the hot, unwholesome 
emanations of the great sandy table-lands of central 
Spain, where reigns a climate which, though Spanish, 
even Spaniards abuse. The air of Madrid (it is a 
type of this climate) they say, — 

" Es tan subtil 
Que mata a un hombre y non apaga a un candil," 

— is so treacherous that it will hill a man and yet not 
put a candle out ; and the Portuguese, who favour 
neither Spaniards nor things Spanish, couple mar- 
riages made across the frontier and the east wind 
that comes from the land they hate, — Be Espanha 
nem horn vento nem bom casamento 9 ,i is a proverb in 
Portugal — " A Spanish match and a Spanish wind 
are two bad things." 

Two days in the Atlantic passed tediously, though 
my deck cabin was comfortable and even clean — for 
the sea, to everyone not born to it, is insufferably 
monotonous, — and on- the third day (the fourth from 
Villa Real) we had sighted the " Rock of Lisbon," 
as our sailors call it, the tall, slender mass of granite 
that stands furthest seaward of the range of the 



266 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Cintra Hills, and which the Portuguese have chris- 
tened " Roca," the distaff. We have called it the 
Rock of Lisbon for at least three hundred years, and 
ninety-nine people out of a hundred who hear it so 
called never doubt that "rock " is an ignorant trans- 
lation of Boca, and is used in its common sense of 
cliff. To anyone who enters the Tagus the name 
must seem singularly inappropriate, seeing that five 
hundred other rocks, nearly as conspicuous, surround 
it ; and it is quite possible that our early navigators, 
who were clever at giving appropriate names, struck 
by this curious distaff-shaped cliff, called it for 
this very reason "the rock," which three hundred 
years ago was the commoner English name for 
distaff. 

Leaving the " Rock ,s a league or so to our 
north, we pass through the broad bay and smooth 
water of " Cascaes," so called from the village of 
that name, the Brighton of Lisbon; then comes 
the picturesque tower of Belem, standing a stone' s- 
throw out in the river ; then the long streets 
of the Lisbon suburbs ; then the hills of the city 
itself, the stately houses and palaces, and the hang- 
ing gardens, and the churches, all glittering in the 
sun, and looking bright and clean, and new and 
regular, as a town might be expected to be that was 
in ashes a short century ago ; — and all delightfully 
refreshing and pleasant to look upon to one who has 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 267 

been among the half-ruined and half-deserted towns, 
and along the dreary plains and the barren moun- 
tains of the southern provinces of Portugal. 

Lisbon is, in some respects, the finest capital in 
Europe, but to the mere stranger, to the tourist 
without introductions, certainly the very dullest. 
Among the frugal Portuguese, public amusements 
meet with little support. No one but a native, and 
not the best among them, would go twice to a Por- 
tuguese bull fight,— always a very foolish and very 
shabby exhibition, and with just that spice of wanton 
cruelty which such exhibitions require to get the 
support of the roughs and blackguards among the 
population. There is almost always an opera in the 
two chief towns, but the company is generally only 
third or fourth-rate. The Portuguese are themselves 
born actors, as good as the Neapolitans perhaps in 
farce and low comedy, but they have little originality, 
and the vast majority of their pieces are adaptations 
from the Prench. I should doubt if there is any 
contemporary drama so little known or understood 
as that of modern Portugal. To follow Portuguese 
as spoken on the stage, and stuffed with colloquial- 
isms, local allusions, and curious idioms, requires 
more than a mere literary acquaintance with the 
language, and is a task within the competence of 
but \erj few foreigners. 



268 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

It is singular that the Portuguese, who, taken as 
a nation, are second to none in good sense and good 
breeding, make audiences whose silliness and rude- 
ness are the despair of impresarios. A paid claque, 
in the French acceptance of the word, is not a Por- 
tuguese institution, but there is a self-constituted 
claque of rowdies in every audience, and these fel- 
lows tyrannize in the most summary manner over 
the rest of the house. Actors or actresses who 
offend this body are seldom allowed to be heard, and 
offence is often given, unconsciously to the actor, by 
some act of the management, by the personal dislike 
of some member of the claque or some quite trivial, 
trumpery cause. Foreign performers are particu- 
larly subjected to such attacks, and I have seen a 
debutante vocalist, a modest, well-behaved English 
girl (on this very ground apparently), assailed with 
a perfect storm of disapprobation, accompanied by 
gross personal insults, and pelted with missiles in 
keeping with the verbal assaults, by twenty or 
thirty young men of the shopkeeping classes, 
while the rest of the audience sat still, in abject 
patience, never dreaming even of showing any 
indignation at the proceeding, or at the loss of their 
evening's amusement. 

I once had the honour of making the acquaint- 
ance, at the inn of a provincial town of Portugal, 
of two distinguished members of an English troupe, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 269 

— the clown and the manager of a well-known 
circus company, and these gentlemen gave me a 
most curious account of the " manners and cus- 
toms" of Portuguese audiences, giving me to un- 
derstand that no audiences in Europe or America, 
in India or the Colonies — and they had travelled 
professionally round the world — were so hard to 
please, so violent in their conduct, or so unfair in 
every way to performers. 

The tourist or sojourner in Portugal will not 
have travelled far or stayed long in the country 
before he hears a good deal of Gran Vasco, the 
famous mythical painter of Portugal to whom 
every good and nearly every old picture in the 
country is ascribed, and of whose life, parentage, 
birthplace, and handiwork, nothing but vague 
rumour has survived. Tradition points, but by no 
means with any satisfactory degree of certainty, to 
the north of Portugal as the native country of Gran 
Vasco, and to the episcopal city of Viseu, among the 
remote mountains of the province of Beira, as the 
place where he was bred and where he worked. 
The Cathedral of Yiseu, at any rate, contains several 
pictures which by general Portuguese consent are 
ascribed to this master. 

It is not a very intelligible circumstance that 
Portugal, which has run her larger neighbour so close 



270 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

in almost everything that distinguishes a civilized 
nation, whose wealth was very great during the 
period covered by the revival and reflorescence of 
arts and letters, whose great nobles were patrons of 
culture of every kind, should be so poor in art work ; 
it is not easy to understand how while Spain 
has produced so many famous painters, Portugal 
should have possessed absolutely none at all ; none, 
that is, of any fame, for with the exception of the 
above-named Gran Yasco, I can think of but two 
Portuguese painters who deserve to rank with even 
fourth or fifth-rate names in the great European art 
roll. 

If Gran Yasco be mythical, as some few sceptics 
allege, it is not difficult to see how such a myth, 
once getting birth, would be nourished into full 
growth among the most credulous and patriotic 
people in Europe. A great artist is wanted in the 
Portuguese Yalhalla, and Gran Yasco is welcomed : 
■populus vult decijpi, and it deceives itself into the 
full belief that it has a Eaphael of its own. To say 
that half-a-dozen educated Portuguese at this day 
entertain the smallest doubt of the existence of Gran 
Yasco is probably an exaggeration, so deeply and 
widely does the belief in him prevail. 

So often had I been tempted to go out of my 
way to look at a masterpiece by Gran Yasco only to 
find some wretched daub, so often have I had to 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 271 

keep my countenance and restrain my impatience 
while I was being lectured on the beauties of some 
monstrous work of the Wardour Street school, that 
I had long ceased either to have any faith in Gran 
Vasco, or even to believe in the existence of a really 
first-rate picture in the country by a native artist. . 
I therefore made the long and tedious pilgrimage to 
Viseu rather to be able to say that I had examined 
this painter's most famous pictures, than because I 
expected to find them worth seeing. 

Happening to be at the time in the province of 
Traz os Montes, I crossed the river Douro at Eegoa 
and proceeded to Lamego, prepared to ride thence to 
Viseu, Lamego is the centre of an episcopal diocese, 
and Yiseu of another, though they are but fifteen or 
sixteen leagues asunder ; but the country between is 
roadless, and includes three wild hill ranges and 
three fair-sized streams, and as it so happens that no 
single inn lies between the two cities, the traveller is 
in consequence compelled to ride the whole distance 
in a single day. In my case it happened to be a 
winter's day, and the journey was performed on a 
weak and stumbling horse hired at Lamego. Begun 
before daylight, the last few hours were ridden in 
the gloom of a winter's evening, and the last of the 
three rivers forded was crossed (it was in full flood 
and very cold) in pitch darkness, save for and by 
the flickering light of torches held by the family of 



272 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

a friendly miller. Tired, cold, and faint for want of 
food, bitterly did I repent the misguided aesthetic 
enthusiasm which had prompted me to travel to 
Viseu to see pictures which I was sure would be 
worthless, and ascribed to a painter whom I had 
never believed in. 

Early on the following morning I went to the 
Cathedral. Passing under its lofty aisles and through 
its dingy cloisters, we reached the Sacristy, a large 
well-lighted chamber. What was my astonishment, 
when after some little fumbling with the key the 
door was thrown open, at finding myself in front of 
one of the grandest masterpieces of the art of paint- 
ing ! Not even before the few greatest pictures of 
the world, not even when standing before Eaphael's 
Madonna at Dresden, the great pictures in the Vati- 
can, or even the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, have 
I felt so unmistakably that I was in the presence of 
the handiwork of a great and rare genius ; and after 
the interval of several years I have not the slightest 
hesitation in recording my opinion that this great 
picture at Yiseu ranks among the six or seven 
masterpieces of the world. 

Count Raczynski, in his work on Portuguese art, 
written some thirty years ago, had indeed, spoken 
very handsomely of the Yiseu pictures, but the 
Count, — a lively writer, and an industrious observer 
— is by no means a safe guide in the matter of 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 273 

art,* as I had already had reason to discover. His 
taste is the taste that found favour with his employers, 
the Academy of Fine Arts at Berlin, some thirty or 
forty years ago ; and these somewhat Philistine and 
academic sympathies find little but antiquarian in- 
terest in the art of periods which he lumps together 
as Gothic. I had hitherto found that what Count 
Eaczynski praised, I could not, and what he con- 
demned I sometimes found admirable ; therefore his 
praise of the Yiseu pictures had weighed with me 
not at all. 

There are in the Cathedral, or rather within its 
precincts, two quite distinct series of pictures — a set 
of fourteen narrow panels (about four feet by two) 
apparently about the date of 1500, and contained in 
the Chapter House, and a series of later date and far 
higher importance in the Sacristy, consisting of four 
large panels and seven smaller ones. Among this 
latter series is the picture which fixed my attention 
on entering the Sacristy. The other pictures are, 
in my opinion, one and all, so inferior in every way 



* Count Raczynski's book is a very curious one, and in spite of 
the author's pleasant style, his diligence and research, one of the 
most unsatisfactory that ever was written. The work consists of a 
series of apparently hastily written letters on "Art in Portugal." 
It is without an index or table of contents, it has no sort of 
arrangement, and the opinions arrived at in the early letters are 
generally abandoned in the later ones. It is a book to be begun 
at the end and only half read through. 

18 



274 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

to this one, that I cannot bring myself to believe 
them to be by the same hand. 

The masterpiece is a large work on panel, about 
eight feet square, in very fair preservation, and in 
three compartments. The central compartment 
represents St. Peter in rich pontifical robes, sitting 
on a throne of polished white marble, over-canopied 
by silken-fringed hangings. The throne with its 
draperies reaches to the top of the picture, and fill- 
ing the archways formed by pilasters and rounded 
arches on each side are exquisitely painted land- 
scapes, distinct but soft .and tender in tone, with 
water, trees, bridges, castles and towns. In the one 
is represented St. Peter walking on. the waves ; in 
the other, the saint receiving the keys of heaven 
from our Lord.* 

It is hardly possible to say too much for the 
technique of this magnificent picture. The drawing 
is masterly, the colour harmonies throughout are 
marvellous ; again and again I turned to dwell on 
the exquisite passages of green and rosy pink in the 
narrow silken fringe of the canopy, set off by the 
cool grey-yellow of the marble. The picture is 
clearly of the early part of the sixteenth century, 
and shows Flemish influences very strongly. But 

* As to the subject of this latter compartment I am not quite 
sure that my memory serves me right. I made, I regret to say, no 
notes either here or elsewhere in Portugal. 



TltAVELS IN PORTVGAL. 275 

the draperies are not marked by the angular folds 
and narrow "pipings" which are characteristic of 
the earlier Flemish schools ; they fall in fine, ample 
masses, with a truth and freedom in their drawing 
which forcibly bring back the broad, unconventional 
treatment of Andrea del Sarto — and yet the ela- 
boration is such that no square quarter of an inch 
of chasuble, tiara, or stole, but is finished with the 
care and precision and richness of a Memling or a 
Matsys, the countless precious stones and threads of 
gold in the embroidered orphreys, glow with the 
light of gems and the brightness of real gold ; and 
yet the first and most lasting impression made by 
the picture, is singleness of purpose and breadth ol 
treatment. 

The glory of the picture is the principal figure. 
The painter has represented the saint in the con- 
ventional attitude of blessing, with the two first 
fingers of the right hand uplifted ; the left holds the 
key and rests on an open book. The attitude is 
simple and noble. The saint is a bearded man 
hardly past the prime of life ; the eyes look directly 
forward and are somewhat lifted as if to take in a 
great crowd; the expression of the face is benign but 
full of boldness and energy. The impressiveness of 
this face is almost startling. It has something of 
the force and intensity of the Kaphael portraits of 
Julius II., but the expression is infinitely more 



276 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

direct, more commanding, and more noble ; it has 
something of the power of Michael Angelo's Moses, 
but it has none of the pagan element which some 
critics have found in that great statue. 

Who was the painter of this grand work of art ? 
Is this the handiwork of the great legendary painter 
who lives so persistently in Portuguese tradition ? 
It would be pleasant to be able to think that it was. 
I tried hard to believe it, but unfortunately the pro- 
babilities are all the other way, and the great mass 
of negative evidence makes the belief in a real Gran 
Yasco wholly untenable. 

A closer examination of the St. Peter leaves little 
doubt as to the age of the picture. The manipula- 
tion is of a particular period, and that a short one ; 
it certainly was not painted before 1500, and it could 
not have been painted later than 1550 ; it was the 
work probably of about 1520. It was a period when 
the richer lines in drapery and more flowing curves 
of outline had been adopted from Italy. The painter 
of this picture had, I believe, looked on the works 
of the great Tuscan artist, but he is no imitator of 
Michael Angelo. The proportions of the human 
figure in the background are no longer the some- 
what stunted proportions given by the Flemish 
painters of the previous generation, they are here 
precisely such as Raphael himself might have drawn ; 
the architectonic details are of that marked Renais- 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 277 

sance period, which is named in Portugal "Manoe- 
lino," after the art-loving King Emmanuel, who died 
in 1521. 

Seeing that the technique of the picture is dis- 
tinctly Flemish, and the somewhat free treatment 
such as was at this period becoming common to 
painters of this school, I should have no hesitation 
in ascribing this picture and the others in the Cathe- 
dral to a Flemish origin, I should have supposed it to 
be the work of one of the many Flemings who were 
then employed in various parts of the Peninsula, 
but for the fact that it is difficult to imagine a man 
of northern race painting a picture and leaving no 
trace whatever of his foreign birth and foreign train- 
ing. I have shown how the fine picture at Oporto 
betrays its origin at once in the fair skin, light hair, 
and markedly northern type of the faces ; in the un- 
mistakable northern landscape background ; in the 
characteristic Flemish plough and Flemish horses ; 
and even in the weeds and flowers in the foreground, 
several of which are not commonly to be found in 
Portugal : — but in the Viseu pictures there is nothing 
of all that. The faces are distinctly southern in type, 
and my closest research did not reveal any northern 
characteristic whatever. 

Here, then, is a dilemma; if this painting be 
the handiwork of a Peninsular artist, it is unique in 
possessing not the mannerism only of a certain 



278 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

northern school, but a degree of artistic skilfulness 
which only two or three masters of that school have 
ever attained to ; again, if it be Flemish, how comes 
it that it bears no internal traces of its origin. There 
is, it seems to me, only one possible reconciliation of 
the alternatives. The picture may be the handiwork 
of a naturalized northerner. There is a familiar 
case in point. The well known Pedro Campana 
was a native of Brussels ; he painted in the very 
generation in which this great picture at Yiseu must 
have been painted ; he lived and worked nearly 
all his life in Spain ; and his pictures have, to my 
perception at least, no trace of their painter's 
nationality, save his manipulative dexterity. Can 
the painter of this Yiseu picture have been some 
such a Peninsularized northern painter, wha 
retained his skill and had dropped his na- 
tionality ? I had for a time supposed that it 
might have been Campana himself who had 
been at work at Yiseu, but having had a sub- 
sequent opportunity of again inspecting this 
painter's masterpiece at Seville, I satisfied myself 
that in spite of some resemblance in the type 
of the head, and a certain Michael- Angeloesque 
force and character common to both works* 
the workmanship of the pictures is essentially 
different. 

Count Raczynski, who had, on his first inspection 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 270 

of these pictures, arrived at the obvious conclusion 
that they were works of the early part of the six- 
teenth century, had this opinion quite unsettled by 
his discovery that the registry of a birth in the year 
1552 existed at Yiseu of "Vasco Fernandes, son of 
Francisco Fernandes, painter.' ' Here was a dis- 
covery indeed ! "Eureka!" cried the count, "I 
have solved the great mystery ; these pictures are 
the work of Vasco Fernandes, the painter of Yiseu ; " 
and who more worthy to be called the " great Vasco " 
than the author of these wonderful works ? The 
Portuguese have gladly accepted the Count's theory, 
and the old mystery of Gran Vasco is for them 
solved and explained. 

Unfortunately the solution breaks down most 
completely. The father of the Vasco Fernandes 
of the register is indeed stated to have been a 
painter, and possibly the son may have followed 
his father's profession; but what proof have we 
that he did ? Further, if the pictures were the 
work of the son, and he was born in 1552, they 
could not well have been painted before he was 
twenty or thirty years of age, that is, before about 
1590, but it is beyond all doubt that these pictures 
were painted before 1550. Moreover, it is assumed 
that Francisco Fernandes, the father, was a painter 
of pictures ; but the presumption is, that a man, 
described in the register as a painter, pintor (in old 



280 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Portuguese, paintor), was a painter indeed, but in 
the less elevated sense of being a " painter and 
glazier." Again, there is another hitch. In the 
register, the supposed artist is plain Francisco Fer- 
nandes. Now, the Portuguese are fonder of giving 
honorary titles than any people in Europe. If a man 
has to write to his shoemaker, he superscribes the 
letter — " To his most Illustrious Lordship," and even 
the little street-boys address one another as " Your 
Worship." If the painter, Francisco Fernandes, 
had been above the rank of a working man, he 
would most assuredly have been described as 
"Mestre," Master, the common designation at that 
time of an artist. That he is not so mentioned, is, 
in my eyes, conclusive evidence that Francisco Fer- 
nandes was no artist at all.* 

My views as to the Viseu pictures were in the 
somewhat vague condition that I have indicated, 
and my mind very sceptically iuclined as to Gran 
Vasco, when I had the advantage to meet with a 
descriptive account of these pictures from the able 
pen of Mr. J. C. Robinson, who made a journey to 

* Sere is a literal transcript of the entry: M* of .course stands 
only for Maria. " Aos xvij. dias do mes de Setembro de 1552 anos 
bautisei Vas<juo f ° de f r c0 Fez. paintor e de m a Amriques sua molher 
forao padrinbos e madrinbas Egas Velbo e p° Lopes f° de A° do 
Rego e R° A° madrinbas m a Lopes molber de Gaspar Vas e O Pays 
molber de Geronymo Tavares todos moradores nesta cidade e por 
verdade asynei aqny, " Afonso Alves." 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 281 

Viseu in the year 1866, Mr. Robinson's opinion of 
the technical merits of the pictures is so valuable 
and so well worth recording, that I take the liberty 
of quoting a few sentences. " All the Yiseu pic- 
tures/' says Mr. Robinson, " are distinguished by a 
remarkable gaiety and lightsomeness of colour; 
.... a beautiful warm yellow, often in considerable 
mass, and frequently in contrast with varied tones of 
a fine purple brown or mulberry tint, is especially re- 
markable in the Chapter House pictures, whilst in 
those of the Sacristy, crimson draperies of a pecu- 
liarly vivid, clear, lightsome ruby colour, apparently 
produced by glazing over an under-painting of black 
and white, will not fail to be observed. The latter 
pictures are, on the whole, more lightsome in effect 
than those of the earlier series ; and although they 
are overlaid by the accumulated dirt of centuries, 
yet, to the professional eye, accustomed to allow for 
such merely temporary obscuration, they still gleam 
forth like jewelled mosaics of rubies, emeralds, and 
sapphires, in a framework of silver." 

Mr. Robinson knows a great deal too" much of 
pictures not to reject Count Raczynski's theory of 
Vasco Fernandes — the dates are enough for him; 
but I was disappointed to find that Mr. Robinson so 
far accepts the questionable Vasco Fernandes as to 
believe that he was a painter of pictures, and even 
to believe that a certain triptych for sale in Viseu, 



282 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

whose central compartment is signed " Yasco Fer- 
nandes," is actually the work of the said Vasco !* 

It was hardly to be supposed that so learned and 
keen an art student as Mr. Robinson should leave 
Viseu without enunciating a new and sufficient reso- 
lution of the Gran Yasco problem, and this he has 
accordingly done. In the church of Santa Cruz, at 
Coimbra, Mr. Robinson had seen the well-known 
sixteenth century panel picture representing the 
Pentecost. He was struck, by the resemblance in 
the manner of this picture and that of the Sacristy 
series at Yiseu. What if the same man had painted 
both ? " The head of the Yiseu St. Peter is re- 
peated, " says Mr. Robinson, " in a St. Peter in the 
Coimbra picture." Only one thing was wanting, 
the name of the painter ; and here Mr. Robinson's 
good luck was really extraordinary. Where had 
been the eyes of all previous observers ? Here, in 
a corner, was " a well preserved and conspicuous 
signature of the artist," Yelasco, L. "Here then," 

* More caution might have been expected of a veteran London 
picture dealer. The triptych is a ruined work of considerable 
merit ; but with every desire to believe in human nature, I may say 
that never did I look upon a more questionable signature than this 
distinctly traced Yasco Fes. I could elicit nothing definite of the 
previous history of the picture, and until such information be freely 
given and fully substantiated, I shall continue to believe that the 
signature is of a later date than Count Raczynski's discovery. One 
would expect Mr. Robinson to be the last person to be taken in by a 
doubtful signature. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 283 

continues Mr. Robinson, with almost excusable en- 
thusiasm, " we have, as I believe, revealed the real 
name of the painter of the St. Peter. ... It 
is, I think, evident, that M. de Kaczynski's Gran 
Yasco in reality was this same Velasco. There is 
something almost painful in this discovery ; but, 
after all, this substitution of one name for another 
is of little real moment ; the pictures remain 
in evidence, and they reflect equal credit on the 
country of their production, although no longer 
enshrouded in an atmosphere of mysterious tradi- 
tion." 

Mr. Robinson, in short, had solved the mystery 
that had endured three hundred years ; and if I 
venture to hint that the chain of evidence is incom- 
plete, and that some hard facts remain to be got 
over, it is in no spirit of disrespect to Mr. Robinson, 
who is replete with that spirit of enthusiasm which 
is the first qualification of a discoverer. 

First, as regards the picture at Coimbra, I must 
hasten to say that, to my own observation, there is 
no such resemblance between it and the Viseu series 
as would constitute a common authorship. They are 
not, to my thinking, even pictures of the same school, 
and the Coimbra work appears to me the later of 
the two ; indeed, until reading Mr. Robinson's paper, 
it had never occurred to me that any such resemblance 
could be alleged to exist. Further, as to the name 



284 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

found on the Coimbra picture, would Mr. Eobinson 
be surprised to learn that there is a well-known 
Spanish painter named Luis Yelasco ? In his later 
manner, he borrowed from the Italian artists brought 
to the country by Phillip II. ; but in his earlier works 
much of the harder and more precise manner of the 
Flemish school is visible. On first seeing the picture 
at Coimbra, conspicuously signed Velasco, L., I never 
doubted, and still do not doubt, that it is the work 
of this same Luis Velasco. To any one familiar 
with pictures in the Peninsula, it will not be neces- 
sary to give evidence of the Christian name being 
made, as in this case, to follow the surname. The 
chef oVoeuvre of Yelasco is at Toledo, and is well 
known to art tourists. 

Now I have a further surprise for Mr. Eobinson. 
What will he say if I tell him that Yelasco is not a 
Portuguese name, and that it is Spanish for Yasco ? 
Had Mr. Eobinson known this, I suspect that he 
would have carried the solution one stage further. 
He would assuredly have said — " It is a melancholy 
duty that I must perform, there is something almost 
painful in having to inform the world that ( Gran 
Yasco ' is no Portuguese at all. It clearly should 
be ' Gran Velasco,' and Spain must get the benefit 
of my discovery ! " 

There is one more, and, if possible, a greater 
difficulty to be encountered before a Portuguese 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 285 

Gran Vasco can be accepted. Mr. Eobinson, pay- 
ing a flying visit to Portugal, could not be expected 
to make himself familiar with the literature or the 
history of the country. He is clearly not aware that 
the period to which he ascribes, correctly as I be- 
lieve, the works of his great Portuguese painter, is 
precisely the most glorious and also the most busy 
literary period in Portuguese history. It was also 
the period during which art was more patronized 
than it ever had been before or has ever been since. 
Moreover, in Damien de Goes, whose chronicle 
embraces this whole period of literary and artistic 
activity, we have an annalist of a most exemplary 
carefulness ; nothing escapes this most tedious of 
chroniclers, and especially nothing relating to the 
building, or restoration, or adornment of a convent 
or a church ; for it was in these things that King 
Emmanuel, his master, chiefly delighted. Was such 
an important fact as the existence of so great a 
painter as Mr. Eobinson has imagined likely to 
escape so keen an observer ? Why, he chronicles 
the arrival, the departure, the board, the lodging, 
the daily pay and the daily progress of a dozen 
Flemish and Dutch painters ! It is dangerous to 
assert a negative, but I have little hesitation in 
asserting that neither in Goes, nor in any contem- 
porary writer whatever, is there even a hint of the 
existence of a native painter of any sort of merit or 



286 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

eminence ; and this negative evidence in so small a 
kingdom is surely very strong ; not conclusive, 
indeed, for it is not in the nature of negative testi- 
mony to be absolutely conclusive. But, curiously 
enough, there does happen to be evidence even 
stronger than this — evidence of a positive kind and 
of absolutely overwhelming weight. Every one who 
knows anything of Portugal and its history, knows 
that among no race has love and pride of country 
been so strong. Never was Portuguese patriotism 
so strong as in this very generation, and no poem 
ever breathed so intense a fervour of patriotic en- 
thusiasm as the " Lusiad" of Camoens. Everything 
which could redound to the glory of his country is 
insisted upon again and again in this great epic. 
"In every heroic quality," says the poet, "our 
nation is pre-eminent ; our men are more heroic 
than other men, our women fairer than other 
women ; in all the arts of peace and war we excel, 
with one exception only, the art of painting ; we 
have absolutely no painters in our country," says 
Camoens ;* "not that our people have not in them 
the making of artists, but because, in Portugal, 
native painters meet with no encouragement. For 
they get," he says, " neither fame, reward, nor 
favour, and these are the things that nourish art." 
Is it credible that Camoens could have written this 

* " Os Lusiadas," canto viii., stanza xxxix. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 287 

in the very generation in which the great Yiseu 
picture was painted ? 

These are a few of the difficulties in the way of 
Mr. Robinson, and when he has overcome these, I 
can promise to find him as many more. A really 
ingenious hypothesis, as this one certainly is, is a 
thing to be thankful for, since on no other terms 
than a controversion of it could I have ventured so 
fully to develop my views on the Gran Yasco myth ; 
and if I have dealt somewhat severely with Mr. 
Robinson's views, it is with no feeling of disrespect 
towards that gentleman, who has rendered no small 
service to the history of art progress, but because 
the question involved is really not one that can be 
trifled with. No particular reproach can be ad- 
dressed to Mr. Robinson for having these few fatal 
faults in his armour — an art-critic is hardly bound 
to be " well up " in the history of such an unim- 
portant little kingdom as Portugal, or be expected 
to have read a difficult author like Camoens ; nor 
perhaps can Mr. Robinson be taken to task for fol- 
lowing Count Raczynski in his failure to appreciate 
the two meanings of the word " pintor ; " but I 
think he should have hesitated before he set down 
Yelasco as a possible Portuguese painter. His very 
guide, or muleteer, could have told him that Yelasco 
and Yelasquez are Spanish for Yasco and Yasquez. 
His blunder here is of the very sort that a man 



288 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

ignorant of the country lie is writing about is sure 
to fall into unawares. That a Portuguese should 
paint a picture at Yiseu, and sign it Yelasco, is as if 
Mr. John Brown should paint a picture at Rochester 
or Ely and sign it Jean le Brun ! On the whole, 
therefore, we must come to the conclusion that the 
mystery of Gran Yasco is still a mystery. 

It is by no means necessary to take the tedious 
route followed by me, in order to reach Viseu. 
The city is well within reach of travellers. To get 
to Yiseu from Lisbon, or Oporto, or Coimbra, is an 
easy matter. From Mealhada, a station on the 
Lisbon and Oporto railway, a diligence reaches 
Yiseu in about eleven hours, and this ancient epis- 
copal city is better off for inns than most towns of 
its size in Portugal. 

This whole district of Portugal is probably less 
known than any portion of the kingdom, and the 
neighbourhood of Yiseu is particularly interesting 
in respect of buildings and of scenery. The neigh- 
bouring towns all contain curious churches, and the 
traveller who passes on the route chosen by me will 
find at Tarouca a fine early Romanesque church, 
which I believe has never even been gazed upon by 
ecclesiological eyes. The great central mountain 
range of the Estrella is in full view and within easy 
distance of Yiseu, and Lamego itself may be reached 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 289 

in two days by a carriage road trending to the east- 
ward which passes through the flat country about 
Trancoso, not an interesting town or country, 
except as having been the site of a famous battle 
between the first Portuguese monarch and the 
Moors. 

This portion of the great province of Beira is an 
elevated table-land ; Viseu itself is 2000 feet above 

i 

the level of the sea, though the traveller, approach- 
ing the town from either the north or the south, 
looks down upon the roofs of the houses and the 
turrets of the cathedral. The whole district is a 
moorland country of sheep flocks and shepherds ; 
and the natives, men and women, in their hooded 
gaberdines of brown cloth — their only garment — 
without hats, with unkempt hair and with bare legs, 
are as wild and savage-looking a set of mountaineers 
as I ever saw ; but they are well-mannered and well- 
behaved. They are a taller and more robust race 
than I had yet met with in Portugal, and ever since 
their long- continued resistance to the Komans under 
their shepherd leader Yiriatus, to the time of the 
Peninsular War, when the soldierly bearing and be- 
haviour of the Beira regiments won praise from the 
Duke of Wellington, the fighting qualities of these 
mountaineers have been famous. The finest regi 
ments in the Portuguese army are to this day re- 
cruited in this part of Beira. 

19 



290 TRAVELS IK PORTUGAL. 

Wild as the inhabitants of this rugged region 
appear to be, there is a considerable degree of cul- 
ture about them. Few parts of Portugal have from 
the earliest periods been so brought under ecclesi- 
astical influence. Bishoprics, as I have shown, 
come very close together, .and in my hurried journey 
from Lamego, I passed the remains of three different 
conventual buildings, which I had no time to examine 
or inquire about. These monastic influences are of 
course now replaced by the feebler influences of the 
parish priests ; but all travellers in Catholic coun- 
tries know how strong and how lasting are the 
good effects of monks on the manners, at least, of 
the surrounding peasantry. 

Like mountaineers elsewhere, the Beira men are 
probably a race of purer blood than the dwellers in 
the plain. Their stature and physiognomy show no 
trace of any Moorish cross. They are not a very 
well-featured race, but have a frank and pleasant 
expression. Looking to this, and to the known 
history of the Moorish conquest and occupation and 
the Christian reconquest, I should be inclined to 
consider them more or less identical with the race 
which inhabited these highlands in the second cen- 
tury B.C., when the heroic Beira chieftain kept the 
whole power of Eome at bay for many years. It is 
not likely that the Beira races of men would suffer 
any considerable deterioration from the Moorish 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 291 

conquest, for it was never the practice of the Maho- 
metan conquerors to depopulate an invaded territory. 
They would have made use of the mountaineers, and 
these latter would have exchanged Moorish masters 
for Christian landlords and employers, when the land 
was again won from the Moors in the early years cf 
the monarchy. Later on, as manners softened, the 
Moors were made slaves, — " to work like a Moor " 
is still a Portuguese proverb — and victors and van- 
quished came in time, and under certain circum- 
stances, to mingle their blood, and we see the result 
in the semi-Moorish inhabitants of the southern pro- 
vinces ; but the conquest of northern Portugal was 
not effected under such circumstances as these. The 
faith feud was, when that conquest was made, still 
bitter, and while the Moors were yet a powerful 
nation, clemency to the conquered was a dangerous 
virtue : we may therefore conclude that a very clean 
sweep indeed was made of the Moorish dwellers on 
this great Viseu table-land. 

If a man could be induced to travel through such 
3, country as Portugal, and content himself with 
setting down the conversation of guides and mule- 
teers, of landlords and of chance companions ; if he 
would avoid airing his own theories and recording 
his own generalizations — vicious practices ! — if he 
would make up his mind that readers are incurious 



292 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

beings, who desire only to have a languid interest 
aroused — it would be not difficult for him to write 
an interesting book of travels, at least in Portugal. 
The Portuguese talk well; conversation is with them 
an art. The working classes, who have no book 
learning, who can seldom, indeed, read or write, study 
the art of conversation as the only form of culture 
possible to them, and they do it very well. They 
modulate their voices, they use incredibly long 
words, they gesticulate with a certain grace and 
propriety, they round their sentences beautifully ; in 
short, they " talk like books." In the upper and es- 
pecially in the middle classes, where the natural talent 
for " tall talk " is aggravated by some educational 
advantages, conversation is often intolerably prig- 
gish and tiresome ; but among the peasantry these 
graces of style are more or less natural, and what 
they say is really often well said ; so well that their 
talk could be transferred easily and with advantage 
to a printed page. 

If it were not that readers in these days are 
somewhat exacting, a man might do well to fol- 
low the old recipe for travel-writing, and, ceasing 
to cater for the fancied wants of intelligent persons, 
give himself up unreservedly to the narrative of his 
own personal adventures, and record the small talk 
of the people he encounters. Be sure, he would make 
an eminently readable book, a far more readable 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 293 

one than the humble writer of these pages can pre- 
tend to write, whose constitutional timidity makes 
him fear to thrust his individuality too prominently 
before his reader, and who has much too high an 
opinion of the intellect of his readers to think they 
would condescend to be so easily interested. 

It is because the Portuguese are so friendly and 
open-hearted a people, and so anxious to do their 
utmost to entertain those who are thrown in contact 
with them, that travel in Portugal, with all its draw- 
backs, is so pleasant. It is a melancholy fact, against 
all accepted theory on the subject, and a thing only to 
be hinted at in a whisper, that education is a terrible 
social disadvantage to a man. Reading and writing 
are, it must be confessed, great drawbacks. Mon- 
sieur Renan, who had seen much of the ignorant 
peasantry of Syria, notices with surprise their ex- 
traordinary culture, their social tact, their courtesy, 
their perfect manners. The peasantry of some parts 
of Portugal are equally unlearned, and their social 
education equally advanced. Their culture too, is 
not, to use something of a bull, altogether illiterate ; 
they know not their letters and yet are men of letters 
— literati illiterati. I could pick out from a certain 
hamlet in the Minho province a dozen men who shall 
extemporize better rhyme, and better reason too, 
who shall know more of pause, metre, and csesura, 
than any minor poet of my acquaintance. Their 



204 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

long sentences are perfectly grammatical. A Portu- 
guese literary friend told me that the peasants round 
Ooimbra talked quite as good Portuguese as he could 
write, using, he said, their imperfects of the sub- 
junctive and all the refinements of the gerund and 
declined infinitive better than, many a Master of Arts 
in the neighbouring University. 

How is this? I thought once it must be the 
work of social contact, and was prepared with a 
theory. Unhindered by the pedantry of schools and 
schoolmasters, I was ready to believe they had leisure 
to cultivate more important things than spelling- 
books and the rules of arithmetic, and were not 
made to store their memories under pretence of 
sharpening their intellects ; and this view of the 
matter might be supported by the known boorish- 
ness of the well-taught German peasantry, the 
education and discourtesy of the working classes 
in Scotland, and the absence of any sort of good 
manners in English common rooms and convoca- 
tions : in all which cases there is social contact and 
a certain amount of intellectual cultivation. But 
this hypothesis breaks down in its turn, for let us 
only think of the ignorance and the manners of a 
village in the Black Country ! Common rooms, 
convocations, and Scotch peasants, are as nothing 
to these " rude sons of toil," and learning once 
more assumes her empire in our estimation. There- 



TBA VELS IN PORTUGAL. 295 

fore I wash my hands of theories altogether, and 
only note the fact that people ignorant of book 
learning have often an education that is more 
softening than book learning, and that the book 
learned are sometimes insufferably self-sufficient 
prigs and pedants. 

During my long day's ride from Lamego to 
Viseu, I should have found tbe way dreary enough 
but lor the society of chance companions. A priest 
of a neighbouring village, hearing I was to make the 
journey to Viseu, joined me at day-break, and kindly 
guided me over the first three leagues of roadless 
hills. A big, ruddy-complexioned, genial man of 
middle age, his talk was not of " matin, laud, and 
compline prayer," and I doubt if his Latin carried 
him further than the reading of his breviary and 
mass book. His Reverence was, I was told at the 
inn, " um grande cagador " — a famous sportsman ; 
and much learned talk passed between us on his 
favourite pastime. He told of waiting for wood- 
cock at nightfall by the edge of damp meadows, and 
killing them by a pot shot on the ground. He told 
me of great shooting parties of a more legitimate 
kind, in autumn, on these heath-covered hills, where 
twenty or thirty or more sportsmen would walk in 
a line, interspersed with beaters and dogs, and get 
excellent sport with hares and the red-legged par- 
tridges ; great, strong coveys of which birds rose 



296 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

now and then at our horses' feet as if to corroborate 
his account; and the- priest told me how sometimes 
an outlying she-wolf with her cubs would get up 
before the line, and then men and dogs would go 
wild with excitement, and every gun far and near 
would be fired off, and every cur start in pursuit ; 
and in the enthusiasm of his description the jovial 
priest favoured me with a Portuguese equivalent of 
our national " Yoicks ! " that rang again in the 
morning air. 

" And the wolf, v I asked, " do you ever shoot 
it?" 

" Never ! " he said, with great positiveness. 

I remembered how Portuguese sportsmen load 
their guns, and was not surprised. A small hand- 
ful of powder, a little grass or a leaf or two, and an 
equal handful of shot of all sizes ; and a huge wad of 
any available material, from wood shavings to paper, 
is rammed down upon this terrifying charge. Well 
do I remember the awe with which I regarded my 
armed Portuguese companion on a certain shooting 
expedition. Not till I had seen the gun discharged 
and my companion still on his legs, after a mild, 
squib-like detonation, did I understand that the 
powder was of native manufacture, and that my 
fears had been groundless. 

" And do your dogs never catch the wolves ? ,J I 
asked. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 297 

" Never," said the priest, as positively as before — 
" never by any chance. They seem just going to, 
for the beast never hurries itself, but," he said, 
imitating with his hand the slow, striding gallop of 
the wolf, "corre, corre, e o diabo mesmo nao o 
apanhava " — he would leave the devil himself behind. 

This is saying a good deal for the wolfs swift- 
ness, for these dogs are long-legged lurchers which, 
with a good start, will often kill a hare, and before 
which a rabbit will not live three minutes in the 
open. 

I admit that I like stories about wolves. In 
these upland and remote parts, where sheep and 
goats are the farmer's principal wealth, and the 
snow often lies for weeks on the ground (we rode 
for several hours, this November day, over fetlock- 
deep in snow), the wolves are numerous and mis- 
chievous, and, if the peasants are to be believed, 
even dangerous. Talk about wolves is very com- 
mon, and as the Portuguese animal is certainly a 
large variety of the common wolf of Europe it 
not a distinct species, darker in colour and fiercer 
in character, the Portuguese wolf-tales have some 
reasonable foundation in fact. 

A noble race of wolf-dogs, dark, long-haired 
mastiffs standing nearly thirty inches in height, is 
bred in the great Estrella range, of which these 
uplands are outlying spurs, and every flock is 



293 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

guarded at night by one or more of these dogs, 
which, armed with broad, spiked collars, remain on 
the outskirts of the flock, while the shepherds 
sleep in their midst. Then, if the wolves steal 
down, on some moonless night, and make a rush 
upon the mixed flocks of sheep and goats, they 
have to do battle with the watch dogs. Often, I 
have been told, if the wolves are in number and 
hungry, some very serious fighting takes place, 
the men in the darkness and in the hurry of the 
fight being able to take little part, but they run up 
and lay about them with their quarter-staves, with, 
no doubt, a very pretty running accompaniment of 
oaths and shouts, mingled with howls and barking 
and growling and resounding blows of the shepherds' 
staves. And nine times out of ten, the wolves get 
off scot free, perhaps leaving a dozen of the flock 
half bitten to death, and the dogs limping and 
bleeding from their wounds, for by all accounts a 
wolf's bite is severe beyond that of any dog. 

Of such a midnight medley the priest gave me a 
most lively description. The dogs, he told me, 
although so large and fierce, are no match for the 
wolves, and a single wolf will kill a single dog with 
ease. It is recorded that the smaller German 
wolf has left indented tooth-marks on a fire-shovel 
used as a weapon against him, and a Portuguese 
shepherd once showed me, on the tough ashen stock 



TBAVELS IK P0B1 UGAL. 299 

of his gun, what seemed to me such tooth marks as 
no dog could have made. As to their prowess 
against human enemies, the priest told me — and 
this opinion I found generally accepted in this dis- 
trict — that a man. of moderate coolness and courage, 
armed either with a gun or with any cutting weapon, 
has nothing to fear from an encounter with a wolf, 
but that with his quarter- staff only, which every 
shepherd carries, a man would be likely to get the 
worst of the fight. "The strongest man," said the 
priest, " cannot with this weapon deal a blow that 
will stagger a wolf. ,, If this be the case, it speaks 
volumes for the hardness of the wolfs head, for the 
mountaineers are as clever in the use of the staft 
as our own ancestors. It is common to see two 
peasants, on a holiday,, fencing (jogando do pao) 
very scientifically in play, and on the only occasion 
on which I saw the quarter-staff used in earnest, 
one of the combatants was brought to the ground 
by as neat a knock-down blow on the crown of the 
head as I ever saw delivered. 

In all my travels in Portugal I never saw a wolf 
alive or dead, often as I have put myself in the way 
of doing so, and I suspect that their numbers must 
have diminished greatly of late years since cheap 
Belgium and Birmingham fire-arms have flooded the 
country. In the wolf-abounding parts it is usual for 
the whole country-side to join in a hunt of the com- 



COO TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

mon enemy in summer time, when the cubs are 
young, and many are thus killed. These compul- 
sory parish hunts, known as Montarias, were once 
common all over the country. 

To an Englishman, who has never dreamt of 
being brought face to face with a wolf, it is curious 
to see how the daily life of people living in wolf- 
frequented countries is, as it were, flavoured by the 
presence of this uncanny beast. We in Great Britain 
may imagine what it is if we could fancy our foxes 
paying occasional visits to our nurseries as well as 
to our hen-roosts, and carrying off a plump baby 
sometimes instead of a fowl or goose. I have heard 
many a story of a wolf leaping through the cottage 
door at dusk, and making off to the woods with the 
first child. I do not believe in these tales, but the 
peasants in the mountain districts do, and when the 
mother leaves the house, she bids the children be 
sure to keep the door shut for fear of the wolf. 

In the last century wolves were very common 
indeed in parts of Portugal where they are now 
unknown. A long period of peace, increase of popu- 
lation, and cheap guns, have been their destruction, 
but it is only within about the last fifty years that 
these influences have been at work. In the last 
century the delivery of wolves' heads was an inci- 
dent of certain tenures of land, and a very common 
form of personal service was attendance at wolf- 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 301 

hunts; but, even then, their number was lessening, 
for a trustworthy native chronicler of the last cen- 
tury, writing of the country 100 years before, says 
the number of wolves in those days was " a fearful 
thing, principally on the seashores and the banks of 
the larger streams. They devoured the flocks and 
even the shepherds, and for this reason a Montana 
was held every Saturday." 

My companion, the priest, was riding a good 
horse, and upon my critical admiration of it, he in- 
sisted upon taking me out of my road to his house, 
to show me a colt of his own breeding. The padre 
then rode with me to the ridge beyond his village, and 
pointed out to me my way across the mountains as 
far as the eye could reach, and the last I saw of him 
was his cheery face, nipped and reddened in the cold 
north wind, and his tall, burly frame wrapped in a 
dark blue cloak, as he waved his slouched hat to me 
in a parting salute — a type of a certain class of 
priest not uncommon in Portugal, and not, I think, 
very well understood by us at home. A peasant by 
birth, mixing on nearly equal terms with the pea- 
sants his parishioners, and with hardly more educa- 
tion than themselves, farming his own land, breeding 
his own ponies, pruning his own vines, and planting 
his own garden plot, and possessed of all a country- 
man's taste and habits — a kind neighbour, and doing 
his priestly duties, as I was told, with a certain 



302 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

dignity and earnestness, he was a man against 
whom rumour could allege no scandal of an im- 
moral life. 

Such a man as this, if the standard of his life is 
not a lofty one, can have no influence but a good 
one ; a tolerant man and a shrewd man, he evidently 
knew when he and his people were well off," and was 
not to be seduced into any Ultramontane vagaries. 
If such priests were as common in the Biscay an pro- 
vinces as in Portugal, Don Carlos would never have 
got a party and an army. My friend's life interests 
were in his own parish, and he did not care to 
enlarge them. He seldom, he told me, went to 
Lamego or Viseu, and only once in his life had been 
to Oporto ; he had never seen Lisbon. His interest 
in distant parts seemed to reside in their sporting 
capabilities, and what was sport in his eyes took a 
sufficiently fantastic shape in mine. About Coimbra, 
he informed me, there was excellent thrush shooting, 
— near Oporto there were crows to be got. 

" Crows ! " I asked, " are they game birds ? You 
cannot eat them, can you ? " 

" To be sure I can ; they are the best game in 
the world," said the padre, " stewed in vinegar there 
is really nothing so good ! " 

The road from Viseu to Mealhada, after a descent 
from the high lands about that city, and after passing 



TRAVELS TN PORTUGAL. C03 

through the pretty village of Saint Columha on the 
river Dao, which the Portuguese shorten into Santa 
Combadao, enters a series of rich but uninteresting 
valleys till the heights about Busaco are reached, — > 
" grim Busaco's iron ridge," Scott calls this famous 
battle ground, — though how Sir Walter came to call 
this tree- covered, rounded hill- side, set in a smiling 
landscape, a " grim iron ridge JS is difficult to say. 
Mealhada, near the railroad, seems to be chiefly a 
" station town," and like all such towns everywhere, 
is regular, ugly and uninteresting. 

Here I take the rail, and proceeding by Coimbra 
and by towns already described, reach Oporto in 
four hours, and passing through that city, travel 
along the road which leads due north from it, and 
enter the pine forests which reach close down to the 
city on this side. A league brings us to the Leca 
river, a pretty stream winding its course, willow and 
alder margined, through rich meadows ; a tiny river, 
hardly more than a brook indeed, yet more cele- 
brated in poets' strains than perhaps any stream of 
its size in Europe. Half a mile down from where 
the road crosses is a fine fourteenth century con- 
ventual church, and the remains of conventual 
buildings of great interest. The place is known as 
Leca do Balio, a corruption of Bailia, a bailiwick or 
commandery of the Knights of St. John of Jerusa- 
lem, and an important capitular house of this great 



304 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL 

Militant Order existed here, in this fertile valley of 
the Leca, from a very early date. 

In the fifteenth century, the convent buildings 
are described as being still in perfect repair. A 
heavy battlemented wall surrounded an extensive 
range of monastic buildings, — a chapel, granges, 
threshing floors, and farm buildings; a square tower 
of immense strength and solidity occupied one angle 
of the inclosure. Of the ancient fortress, this tower 
is all that now remains. It is, without any manner 
of doubt, the work of men who lived in the first 
hundred years after the establishment of the king- 
dom. A grand piece of work ; — not a ruin ; for it 
stands all in its ancient formidable integrity, and the 
great mass of squared granite, hardly touched by 
the tooth of time, frowns down upon the mild 
ecclesiological tourist of to-day with all the warlike 
dignity with which it daunted the marauding Saracen 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 

In 1330 Friar Stephen Yasquez Pimental, being 
then Grand Commander of the Order, and also Prior 
of the Monastery, began to build the church, which 
still remains very nearly as he left it. It was finished 
in 1336, and in that year Prior Stephen died.* The 

* In May, 1336, or, as the fine monumental brass in the church 
curiously and neatly puts it, in longs and shorts, 

" Mil tercentenis et sejptuaginta quatemis 
Hie dbiit Madia mense quasi medio ; " 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. C05 

building of so large an edifice in six years testifies 
to the wealth of the Order in no slight degree. The 
church consists of a particularly lofty central aisle 
and two side aisles, divided by shapely columns with 
elaborately carved grotesque capitals of high artistic 
value. The central aisle terminates in a spacious 
apsidal recess, very finely groined, forming a kind of 
chancel. I look upon this church as being — apart 
from its actual beauty — the most important in Por- 
tugal from an ecclesiological point of view. The 
building itself, quite apart from what the records 
tell us, gives every evidence of being almost wholly 
of one period, and that a short one. The wealthy 
Order to which it belonged would have employed, 
and clearly did employ, the highest architectural 
talent of the period. The workmanship is indeed 
admirable ; and a knowledge of Leca do Balio as a 
whole and in detail is, in my opinion, an indispen- 
sable key to the study of Portuguese ecclesiastical 
archaeology. 

The road northward from Leca lies through the 

which must not, however, be translated literally, for the Christian 
era was not in general nse in Portugal till about the middle of the 
fifteenth century. Till then the Portuguese usually reckoned from 
the conquest of the Peninsula by the Romans, B.C. 38. This fact 
seems to be not generally known, for I have met with some very 
curious chronological misapprehensions in accounts of Portugal. In 
all dates on Portuguese monuments or charters before 1470 or 1480, 
unless there is apparent reason against it, it is safe to deduct thirty- 
eight years. 

20 



306 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

vast pine woods which form so broad a zone along 
the Portuguese sea-board. The pine of Portugal- is 
as a rule the fast-growing Pinus maritima, very like 
our own Scotch fir, and quite as ugly a tree when 
young. In some places the more picturesque stone 
pine is found, but it is of slower growth, and not- 
withstanding the greater value of its timber and the 
use as food of its filbert-like cone kernels, it is little 
cultivated. The commoner pine grows rapidly in 
poor soil, and fine trees are often seen with their 
roots in mere sand. 

The pine forest is in general monotonous and 
unpicturesque, for the trees are always cut before 
they reach to the dignity of " two ton timber," and 
the side branches are loppecl year after year to 
within a yard or two of the tree top. The traveller 
passes league after league of straight- stemmed pine, 
and wearies for the sight of a green field or a vine- 
yard. The pine forest, too, as in other countries, is 
silent and deserted : blackbirds, jays and magpies 
are the only birds commonly seen or heard. Now 
and then a wood owl flits out of the shadow of an 
ivied tree, and the occasional tap of a woodpecker's 
beak, or his sudden, laugh-like cry, are sounds that 
a traveller feels to be a relief to the stillness. 
Human beings are rarely encountered, though the 
forest maintains its own peculiar population. Where 
the trees are rooted in anything but blowing sand, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 307 

gorse grows; and the cutting of it once in every 
three years affords some profit. Gorse in Portu- 
guese farm economy is of great value, being used for 
the bedding of horned cattle, while the whole of the 
straw of the farm is used for their food ; a system 
that has many obvious advantages, and others thai 
are not so obvious. 

Every now and then, in the depth of the forest, 
a party of charcoal burners is met with, or of 
sawyers and carpenters, who encamp in the woods, 
fell and saw up the pines, and make the boards upon 
the spot into doors, window-frames and boxes, that 
are carried long distances for sale. If the forest is in 
the neighbourhood of towns, the fallen needles and 
cones are collected by women and children, and car- 
ried in nets on donkey-back for sale as fuel. These 
are the purely fores tal industries — the only human 
life connected with it — but this dreary desert of pine 
wood has its oases. Wherever a brook crosses the 
forest the scene shifts immediately, and the water- 
course is margined by narrow fields of maize, rye 
and wheat, or orchards of fruit trees reach on either 
side as far as the water can be made to flow. The 
stream itself is bordered with pollarded oak and 
chestnut trees, over which vines are trained. The 
water-drops work like magic under these hot suns, 
and the barren, dusty soil is turned by them into 
fertile meadow land. The silence of the forest is 



SOS TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

exchanged in an instant for a concert of woodlarks 
and nightingales, and the refreshing coolness of the 
water-laden air and the green shadow of deciduous 
trees are positively delicious to the traveller who has 
passed through the shadeless forest and breathed 
the dry, over- sunned air, pungent with the peculiar 
burnt odour which the pines give out. 

In giving this account of a Portuguese pine 
forest, I have broken my rule of not dwelling upon 
scenery, for what I have described is typical of 
many long, weary leagues that every wayfarer in 
Portugal will have to travel over. 

On this northward road, however, through the 
Minho province, the forest soon begins to break into 
fields, and the pines give place to some of the most 
highly cultivated land in Europe ; not the most fer- 
tile nor the most scientifically cultivated, for the soil 
is, for the most part, a porous decomposed granite, 
of great depth, but little natural fertility. The pro- 
vince is densely populated, and the farmers are as a 
rule peasant proprietors with small holdings of from 
five to twenty acres,* 

The system of farming is by no means unsuited 
to a country where land is scarce and dear, and 
labour plentiful and cheap, — a hilly country, full of 

* Holding, as I have before explained, by the Emphyteutic 
tenure, which has got in process of time to be nearly equivalent to 
our English tenure by copyhold. 



TRAVELS IN rOBTUGAL. 309 

streams, springs and water runlets, and where water 
is the chief source of fertility. 

My way northward lay through Barcellos, a 
charming type of an old Portuguese town. The 
river Cavado is here crossed by an ivy-clothed, 
mediasval bridge with massive arch-piers of immense 
solidity, and it is singular in this respect, that the 
water is dammed at the bridge itself and falls in a 
broad cascade which is used to turn the wheels of 
several water mills, each of which nestles pic- 
turesquely at the foot of the piers. 

The town is built on rocky land which rises 
abruptly from the w T ater's edge, and the grey ruins 
of a massive stronghold of fourteenth century work 
face the approach by the bridge. It is a town for an 
artist or an antiquarian to linger in, and willingly 
would I detain the reader among the Gothic churches 
and the remains of curious mediasval domestic archi- 
tecture ; but my space is drawing to a close, and a 
writer may do worse than remember that agreeable 
writing does not always make pleasant reading. 

So I pass on through the streets of Barcellos to 
stop before an open doorway whence proceed sounds 
of a curious rhythmic chaunt, a refrain of childish 
voices, which brings to my memory jumbled asso- 
ciations of Sunday-school children in England, and 
of schools of shrill -voiced children in far-off Eastern 
countries; and the latter association prevails, as I 



310 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

walk in and see some thirty dark-skinned and 
bright- eyed children of from four to nine sitting 
cross-legged on the ground, exactly as I had seen a 
party of little Mahometans in Cairo or Damascus, all 
repeating at the dictation of a teacher, in a loud, 
rhythmic, sing-song tone, a sentence which, after 
some trouble, I made out to be part of a poetic 
version of the multiplication table. The whole thirty 
swung their bodies forward at the end of each verse, 
exactly as I have seen Eastern children do. The 
same monotonous, howling chaunt, the same cross- 
legged attitude, the same antiphonal mode of teach- 
ing, the solo part taken by the teacher and the 
repetition in the shrill voices of the children, were 
common to the Christian and the Mahometan school 
children. The children appeared to like it, their 
attention did not seem to flag, but then it was diffi- 
cult to say how much of it was engaged ; half their 
eyes were shut. 

A young priest was teaching. An elderly one, 
with white hair and a benevolent expression of face, 
sat by. I bowed to him ; he returned my salute and 
requested me to be covered. I told him I was a 
traveller, and was desirous of seeing a Portuguese 
school. He begged me to be seated. 

He told me of their mode of education; it was 
an appeal, he said, chiefly to the memory — too much 
so it seemed to me, with my narrow British and 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 311 

Protestant prejudices. "First," said the priest, 
" they have to learn facts ; reasoning comes after- 
wards." The position is a strong one, and I never 
argue with a courteous host. " What do they know?" 
I said, pointing to a row of the eldest. 

" They can read," he said, " they understand 
geography, they can cipher, and they have the doc- 
trines of our Holy Church at their fingers' ends." 

" It says a great deal for the system," I said. 

" Would you like to see for yourself ? " 

I thought he was going to use the established 
formula — would I take a class ? Perhaps he was, 
and perhaps, seeing me visibly shrink from the pro- 
position, he refrained. 

He beckoned to a pretty little girl of eight, sitting 
at the end of the front row. She came up, putting 
her head on one side, her finger in the corner of 
her mouth, and stood before us. The benevolent 
priest patted her on the head. " This gentleman is 
going to ask you some questions," he said. 

My mind suddenly became a blank. I did not 
know where to begin. There came into my head a 
story of a school inspector, or some equally formid- 
able person, asking under similar circumstances, a 
little school girl, " When the dove returned to the ark 
the second time, what did it bring back ?" and being 
entirely puzzled and thrown off his balance by the 
unhesitating answer, "Adam, sir!" the child having 



312 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

by some utterly inscrutable mental process fished up 
our first parent from the depths of her childish 
puzzle-headedness . 

I was afraid of being brought to shame by some 
similar childish vagary, and beyond eliciting from 
her that her name was Zefinha, which is childish for 
Josepha, and that she was eight years old, I did not 
venture further to explore her mental resources. 
Arithmetic is not a favourite subject with me, school 
theology is a dangerous one, and Mr. Forster himself 
might have hesitated to commit himself before a 
schoolful of sharp-witted foreign children and a 
couple of critical Catholic priests. I begged the 
priest to question her for me. 

I am sorry to say that she broke down shame- 
fully. With an unblushing and smiling face she 
made the most fearful havoc with the multiplication 
table, and failed so completely in her divinity that 
finally the priest and I and the child herself had to 
give way to our feelings, and laughed out fairly and 
loudly ; and when he had recovered a little of his 
gravity, the good priest shook his forefinger in mock 
anger at Zefinha and sent the interesting little idiot 
back to her seat on the floor. 

"What, after all, Senh'or Padre," said I, using 
a broad and consolatory form of philosophy, " what, 
after all, is the value of earthly learning ? " 

The priest pursed his mouth together, screwed 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. '6V6 

his eyes up a little, and slowly nodded his head 
several times in token of assent. 

" That little girl clearly knows too much," I 
said. 

The priest again assented. 

" As she grows up," I pursued, " she will begin 
to forget a little of what you have taught her ; her 
facts will arrange themselves; she will no longer 
mis up her arithmetic with her theology, she will 
separate her geography from her grammar — just as 
—as " 

" Just as a farmer separates his kidney beans 
from his maize on the threshing floor," said the 
priest, pleasantly, and offering me his open snuff- 
box. 

"Poor child!" I said; "one cannot expect 
reason from her." 

"No, indeed!" said the priest; "how can any 
one expect reason from the poor little creatures ? 
That is not our system at all. We make them say a 
thing a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times, 
bawling it out, as you heard, at the top of their 
voices, and then they know it." 

" Yes," said I, "and believe it." 

" Of course," said the kindly priest, " and be- 
lieve it too." 

• 

I have said, almost at the be^innin^ of these 



314 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Travels, how the farm system of this northern 
corner of Portugal seemed to me to be more 
completely after the old Roman type than that of 
any other country of Europe, even Italy; and now, 
visiting the province again after an interval, and 
after seeing the other provinces of the kingdom east 
and south of it, it strikes me with more force than 
ever how close is this resemblance between the 
Minhote and the old Italian husbandry, and how 
exactly the ancient traditions have been handed 
down. The field instruments of modern Portugal 
in shape and often in name are Roman : the arado 
is the single stilted plough (aratrum) formed of a 
crooked bough ; the sickle, fauce, the Latin falx ; 
the carro, the solid-wheeled cart with wicker-work 
sides, is called after the Latin carries, but is equiva- 
lent to the Roman jplaustrum; the lighter hoe is sacho, 
from the Latin sar cuius ; grade, a harrow, is, no 
doubt, the Latin crates ; and plough, cart, sickle, 
hoe and harrow do not merely resemble the old 
Roman instruments, but are absolutely identical 
with those which are represented on the medals and 
bas-reliefs of ancient Rome. 

The introduction, in the sixteenth century, of 
maize as a cereal crop might be supposed to have 
interfered with the old farming traditions, but it has 
done so only to a small extent. The Portuguese 
called the New World corn milho, after the millet 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. S15 

(millium) which they already possessed, whose tall 
growth it somewhat resembles, and sowed it, hoed 
it, and irrigated it as they had been accustomed to 
do with millet. 

It is not, however, in such matters as the forms 
of tools, which are preserved in all countries through 
long generations, nor in their names, which are 
still less likely to suffer alteration, that the ancient 
masters of the Portuguese have left the strongest 
evidence of the lessons first taught by them. 
These are matters that the most hasty and cursory 
tourist can discover for himself; it is in the inner 
life of the farm that the old traditions are most 
faithfully preserved. 

Columella tells us that for a farm of a little over 
a hundred acres, two yoke of oxen and two drivers 
to each, and six labourers for general cultivation, 
were enough; if there was much underwood, two 
more men were wanted. This is, indeed, a low 
estimate where wine and maize are grown, and 
where hoeing and constant irrigation are required, 
but in the hilly rye-lands of Portugal, with flocks of 
sheep and grazing land, it is a fair estimate. On the- 
great upland plain of Chaves, a farmer whom I 
asked about the stock and labour for a hundred acre 
farm, answered me almost in the words I have 
quoted. To be sure, both the Portuguese and the 
Peninsular Roman had a verv low standard of farm- 



316 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

ins% and the land in modern Portugal is but half 
farmed, as it must have been in Iberia and ancient 
Italy. 

Then a^ain, there is the wine making. In a recent 
number of a contemporary magazine,''' Mr. Matthew 
Freke Turner has told us how the Roman farmers 
made their commoner wines — their vin ordinaire — and 
the process is identical with that followed in this pro- 
vince. The vine is grown as a climber on pollarded 
trees, as the vines of Latium and the Campania 
were grown : the Minho province is near the sea, as 
those districts were : the vines are pruned exactly as 
they were pruned in Central Italy, the latitude is the 
same, and the varieties of the vine perhaps even iden- 
tical. Anyone therefore who has tasted the famous 
vinho verde of northern Portugal — the thick, red, sour 
and astringent wine which the Minhotes delight in 
—may satisfy himself that he has drunk a liquid iden- 
tical in every w r ay with that wherewith the Latian 
farmer quenched his thirst two thousand years ago. 
He may even please himself by thinking that Horace 
himself on his Tusculan farm, in daily life, when the 
jars of Caecuban, Alban and Falernian were left 
undisturbed in the cellar, drank such a wine as this. 
The scholar or the antiquarian, who is too dry-souled 
to amuse himself with such a mere sentiment, may 

* "Wine and "Wine Merchants," in the New QUxIuterly 
Magazine for April, 1874. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 317 

yet drink a glass of the vinlw verde and understand 
for ever after that which has always been a puzzle 
to students of antiquity, namely, how it was that the 
Greeks and Eomans could bring themselves to dilute 
their wines with sea water, to mix them with honey 
or spices, or even to grate goat's-milk cheese into 
the wine cup. No stranger who has drunk a full 
draught of this really awful Minho wine but might 
sigh for even such adulterations as these. 

It is curious, too, as further evidence of the long 
and faithful tradition of farm economy, that these 
northern Portuguese farmers deal with the drinking 
of the wine (they mostly keep it for farm use) just 
as their first masters in agriculture did before them. 
" Let the labourers," says the frugal Cato, " drink 
up the lora" the thin stuff made by adding water to 
the already pressed grapes and treading out a thin 
and make-shift kind of wine therefrom. " Let them 
drink up the lora," he says, " in the three months 
that follow the vintage." The Portuguese call this 
stuff agua jpe — foot water — and likewise consume it 
in early winter. After Christmas, Portuguese far- 
mers follow Cato's precept, and let their men have a 
small measure of real wine daily. In the spring, the 
quantity was doubled in ancient Italy, and is doubled 
in modern Portugal. In the long summer days, the 
portion is trebled for the Minhote, as Cato prescribes ; 
and, calculating the ancient measure as well as we 



318 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL, 

are able, the allowance would reach three or four 
gallons a month the year through. It is quite 
as great on a well managed Portuguese farm to this 

day- 
Let the fact be observed, and] et the reader draw 

from it what deduction he pleases, that this Portu- 
guese wine is probably about three times as strong 
as ordinary English beer, and yet that drunkenness 
is very rare. 

To our nicer palates it is a terrible drink, one 
that rasps a mans throat, fills his eyes with tears, 
and almost takes his breath away ; but to the 
Minhote labourer, in the heat and burden of his 
long day's work, it is clearly delicious. It is meat 
and drink to him. He finds refreshment in its 
acidity, he is fortified by its austerity, revived by 
its strength, and finds in its cenanthic, etherous 
essences — beyond the reach of chemists and pro- 
fessors — some subtle distillation of Nature's labora- 
tory kindly to life. 

Often in travelling along the dusty highway 
have I watched a group of sunburnt peasants, 
lying under the shade of a vine-trellis or a cork- 
tree, taking their afternoon merenda — a sort of 
five o'clock tea, if the bull may be used — when 
they rest for a quarter of an hour — a tiny slice 
of repose out of their thirteen or fourteen hours 
of continuous labour— eating a handful of olives 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 319 

and a crust of black bread; and pleasant it is to 
see these hard-working, civil-spoken men, jaded 
with honest toil, take a long, sweet pull from the 
wine jar, and to watch how the wine god enters 
into them, restores their spirits, and renews their 
strength. 

I am now within a few leagues of the northern 
boundary of the kingdom, and of the road which I 
travelled over in my first chapter. Braga, the archi- 
episcopal city, and Guimaraens, the famous seat of 
government of the early kings, I leave undescribed, 
though they lie in the country between where I now 
stand, and the northern frontier. I need say 
nothing about them, for they are well known cities, 
tourist-haunted, and described by worthier pens 
than mine. 

There now remain but a very few lines to write 
of these Travels, and I cannot fill them better than 
by summarizing the experience I have gained of the 
Portuguese as a people. 

Unless a man have denationalized himself, and 
parted with all the prejudices that his birth and 
breeding have made part of his nature — and I can 
claim to have made my observations from no such 
philosophic standpoint — unless he have become a 
thorough citizen of the world, all foreigners will 
seem to him to fall short whenever they differ from 



320 TBAVEL8 IN POBTUGAL. 

the standard which he has got to set up. In follow- 
ing me the reader will have had evidence enough 
that I am not unbiassed by the prejudices of a 
thorough-going Englishman, and in his wisdom he 
will have made due allowances accordingly. 
Moreover, he will remember that the fatigues, 
the delays, the many small worries of travel, 
are sore trials to the temper, and that a man 
is never so little of a philosopher as when he is on 
a journey. 

I have found plenty to criticise in some phases 
of the Portuguese character, and I have perhaps 
too much followed the humour of the day in being 
over scant of approbation. Nevertheless, writing 
now calmly and at a distance of time and place, and 
summing up the character of a people whom I may 
claim to have studied carefully, I can find little but 
good to say of them. The heart of the nation is a 
sound, honest heart. Portugal is essentially an 
agricultural country, and in the country districts a 
fairly high standard of honesty and morality prevails. 
If this standard is not so universally reached in the 
towns, it is rather the inferior tradesmen and the 
loafers in the streets who fail to have quite per- 
suaded themselves that " honesty is a good policy." 
Among such people to say of a man that he is " muito 
fino" very sharp, is high praise, and the expression 
comprises some very sharp practice indeed. I should 



TRAVELS IN POMTUGAL. 321 

say that the morality of such people was of about 
the looseness of that of betting men of the lower class 
at home — not very outrageously bad, but morality 
that will not bear too close a scrutiny. 

On the other hand, to say of a countryman that 
he is a "jpe de boi" is to pay him the greatest of 
•compliments. Literally "an ox- foot," it of course 
means that he is a steady, true man, slow to make a 
promise, but sure to keep it. These two proverbial 
phrases tell their own story. 

In Portugal the highest classes and the lowest 
classes are the most agreeable in every way to have 
to do with. The very highest class in a country 
which is almost purely agricultural is, of course, a 
class of country gentlemen. Countrymen by birth, 
by breeding, and in heart, they are for the most part 
men of the world who have rubbed off the uncouth- 
ness of country breeding. From this rank come 
many of the foremost politicians, merchants, and. 
financiers of the country ; and the high standard of 
honour and the educated manner which are charac- 
teristic of such a class everywhere, reach a long way 
down in Portugal. To be sure, the morality is a 
little diluted, as the social scale is descended ; but of 
this I have perhaps already said enough. This class 
is a small one, and the black sheep in it are, after all, 
rare exceptions. 

Of the working men, in town and country, it is 

21 



322 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

difficult to speak too highly. Sober, hard-working, 
well-mannered, frugal, light-hearted and law-abiding, 
the Portuguese peasant and the Portuguese work- 
man make a class of citizens of whom any country 
might well be proud. 

This, then, is the result of my observation of this 
small and, of late years, little noticed people. The 
geographical position of the kingdom, with the finest 
natural harbour on the whole western shores of the- 
continent, its long independence under difficult cir- 
cumstances, its nearness to our own coasts, the part- 
it has taken with ourselves in great historical 
emergencies, the successful working in the country 
of a representative government not unlike our 
own — all these things make Portugal a country 
deeply interesting to the people of Great 
Britain. 

To us Portugal is, and always has been, an im- 
portant part of Europe. The nation, small as it is, 
is not without potentiality of influence in European 
affairs. The individual Portuguese is perhaps not 
a braver man than the individual Spaniard, but he 
is less of a gasconader; he is more capable of 
loyalty ; he is more susceptible of discipline ; an 
army of Portuguese is an admirable army. It is 
well known how "Wellington was inclined at first to 
rate the Spanish troops much higher than his 
Portuguese allies, and how soon he found out his 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 323 

mistake ; well fed, well led and well disciplined, 
they became, in the Duke's own words, " the fight- 
ing cocks of the Peninsular army ; " he ranked 
them next only to British troops. 

These facts should not be forgotten. This nation 
is our natural ally ; the vigour, the self-respect and 
that peculiar sturdiness of temper which we pride 
ourselves upon, are also Portuguese characteristics. 
The nation is one friendly to ourselves, and whose 
interests in this continent are our interests, whose 
enemies in a great war are quite certain to be our 
enemies, and who have left their own indelible mark 
on the page of history by virtue of some great and 
rare qualities, which happen to be those very qua- 
lities which have made of ourselves a great and 
famous nation. 



SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 

Reasons for Writing a Supplementary Chapter — Influence of the 
Moon in Portugal — The Planting of Cabbages — Spade and Hoe 
Cultivation — Women's Work — Superstitious Notions — The FaU 
tening of Pigs — The Priests' Influence — Non-Secular Education- 
Cheap Substitute for Newspapers — Hints to Tourists — Climate — 
Language — Anecdote — Philistinism — Anecdote — Manners and 
Morals — Management of Forests and Orchards — A Secret in 
Forestal Science — Flower Gardens — A Problem in Agriculture — 
Farm System of Portugal. 

The occasion of my writing this last and Supple- 
mentary Chapter was the allegation made by several 
critics in the public press who, having reviewed in 
no unfriendly spirit the previous portions of these 
Travels as they appeared in periodical issues of The 
New Quaeteely Magazine, complained that although 
I bad written fully of the " manners, customs, dress, 
architecture, painting, land tenure, government and 
so forth," of a little- visited country, I had failed 
not only to give any hints for the guidance of future 
travellers, but, further, that I had not " reported any 
facts of substantial practical utility." " Is there 
nothing," one of my critics asked, " in the ways of a 
people whom our author describes as thrifty and in- 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 325 

genious, which could be turned to advantage by the 
great mass of our own countrymen ? " The same 
writer asked me, with somewhat greater severity 
(after certain complimentary remarks which I re- 
frain from quoting) what, " beyond mere amusement 
and a sort of aesthetic literary interest, is to be got 
out of what Mr. Latouche has written ? " 

The good sense and justice of these criticisms 
struck me, and I lost no time in stringing together 
as many hard and practical facts concerning Portu- 
guese ways of life as I could bring to my recollection, 
setting them forth so seriously and so plainly that I 
am sure no critic whatever, be he ever so unsesthetic 
and anxious for solid information, will have occa- 
sion to quarrel with me any more. 

The Portuguese are a shrewd people and an acute 
people ; they love to look into the nature of things 
that concern their daily life. They will reason 
soundly, and (when they can forget the influence of 
the moon) to good purpose, not indeed on such 
themes as — 

" Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate," 

but on those lesser and yet not unimportant laws of 
Nature which concern the planting of cabbages, the 
fattening of pigs, the curing of bacon, wine-making, 
farming and the domestic treatment of diseases. 
It is not to be expected that a true-born English- 



326 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

man, strong in his many wholesome convictions and 
prejudices, should admit for a moment that in any 
one of these matters he has anything to learn from a 
Portuguese ; but he may be instructed by the blun- 
ders of the foreigners, and now and then he can take 
note that there are sometimes two ways of doing 
the same thing, and that it is just possible that the 
English way may not be the best. I will illustrate 
these two propositions by the above-mentioned 
simple operation of planting cabbages. Our gar- 
deners plant them with a spade, the Portuguese 
with a strong, broad-bladed hoe. Now, it is a de- 
monstrable fact that while the spade plants two 
cabbages, the hoe, stirring the soil as deeply and as 
effectually, and distributing the manure more deftly, 
will plant three. The same comparison applies to 
potato planting ; and an English civil engineer in 
Portugal once gave it to me as his opinion that the 
hoe as a navigator's tool (supplemented by a basket 
carried on the head) was in some respects superior 
to the spade — or rather to the pick and shovel of 
the English navvy. The pick, shovel and barrow, 
in the hands of a strong navvy, were certainly, he 
said, the most efficient means of doing navigator's 
work, but where the best male labour was not pro- 
curable in sufficient quantity, it was found that the 
cheaper labour of women, and even of children, with 
hoe and basket, was very efficient. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 327 

I will observe, in passing, and as a small con- 
tribution to the great " Woman's Work " contro- 
yersy, that in rural Portugal the women work as 
hard in the fields as the men, both sexes beginning 
as mere children ; and further, that in health and 
a generally buxom, contented appearance, the pea- 
sant women of Portugal compare favourably with 
peasant women the world over. No representative 
exists in Portugal of the pale, care-worn, slatternly 
labourer's wife of our English cottages ; she is re- 
placed by a cheerful, robust, sunburnt, gaily-dressed 
woman, who on festivals wears from five pounds to 
twenty or thirty pound's worth of gold jewelry 
round her neck and in her ears. 

To return to the planting of cabbages : — if the 
Portuguese gain by planting them better and more 
quickly than we can, they lose by failing to under- 
stand that the plant dwindles if it is grown con- 
tinuously in the same plot of ground, and, so planted, 
only thrives at all by being preposterously manured. 
In this matter, then, we may learn from the Portu- 
guese to plant our cabbages more quickly, and if we 
<lo not choose therein to better our ways, we can at 
least be thoroughly confirmed in our own wisdom, 
which teaches us never to plant them two years run- 
ning in the same ground. 

There is another matter in which our good sense 
is not very particularly apparent, and is yet far above 



328 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

that of the natives of Portugal. In remote parts 01 
Great Britain certain mischievous superstitions still 
lurk, and in districts of our native land not remote, 
the moon still governs the actions of men. Belief 
in witchcraft and similar folly is continually cropping 
up at home, but it is as nothing to the similar cre- 
dulity that is prevalent in Portugal. If a man were 
minded to write a paper on the folly of superstition,. 
— on superstition as a hindrance to human welfare — 
nowhere could he do so with greater ease and profit 
than in this small kingdom. All manner of innocent 
and of nasty plants are thought to be sovereign in 
various diseases, if only they are culled at some par- 
ticular age of the moou, carried in a particular man- 
ner by a church door, or even laid for an instant on 
the altar. An ox or a sheep dying of active inflam- 
mation, poisoned by yew leaves, or henbane, or fox- 
glove, has an incantation muttered over it, is 
drenched with a decoction of some generally 
innocuous but sometimes hurtful herb, and often 
gets no other treatment whatever. 

The • credulity that prevails in rural Portugal 
respecting the ways of birds and beasts is marvel- 
lous, — an ignorance which the people might be sup- 
posed able to correct by common observation. Their 
strange distortion of facts quite within every-daj 
knowledge governs their practice, and is found — best 
proof of its acceptance — in their very proverbs* 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 329 

The common people express sudden, rapid and com- 
plete action by a proverb which implies that it is the 
habit of the weazel, on occasion, to jump down the 
throat of the toad ! The screech owl haunts grave- 
yards in Portugal, and digs up the bodies of the 
dead ; not content with which, this bird acts the 
same ghoul-like part towards newly- sown peas and 
beans. The hedgehog sucks the milch cows, as 
with us at home, and I have been told that snakes 
and the larger lizards do the same by goats and 
ewes. The wehr-wolf belief is almost universal in 
northern and western Portugal, and the existence 
of witches and warlocks and revenants of every 
kind is established on evidence more than sufficient 
to convince Mr. Wallace of spiritualistic celebrity. 

Such innocent superstitions, as these, however, 
amuse the people, and do them, so far as I can tell, 
no material harm. The actual damage to their in- 
terests is inflicted in a much more prosaic manner, 
and a statistician might profitably employ himself in 
calculating the actual money loss suffered by a nation 
which allows itself to be ruled by the moon rather 
than by its own senses. To take one instance ; — the 
market gardeners and farmers near the two principal 
seaports of Portugal grow quantities of the large and 
valuable onions which are exported to many Euro- 
pean countries. The climate, together with very 
careful and skilful cultivation, brings these onions to 



330 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

a size and flavour not to be obtained elsewhere. As 
may be supposed, the crop is a precarious one at best. 
The seed is sown in about October, and the young 
onions transplanted in the following April. Now, 
every farmer or gardener would see the paramount 
importance of choosing moist , warm, and showery 
weather to sow the seed. Not so the Portuguese : 
he will let the most favourable weather pass if the 
phase of the moon be not favourable as well, and 
will sow in a frost or an east wind if only his 
almanack bids him. It is quite certain that this 
stupidity is sometimes equivalent to the loss of more 
than half of this important crop. 

To take another instance from rural domestic 
life : — With an agricultural population, pig- fattening 
is necessarily an important matter. No Portuguese, 
high or low, rich or poor, old or young, is, I am in- 
clined to believe, quite happy who does not possess 
a pig in process of fattening. Autumn comes 
round, the pigs get fatter, but not rapidly. The 
breeds of Yorkshire and Berkshire are unknown; 
the Portuguese animal has the length of leg, the 
leanness, and nearly the speed of the English 
greyhound. He will not be hurried into present- 
able bacon; his .fattening is a slow and precarious 
process. Nevertheless, fat or lean, the last new 
moon before the winter quarter must be fatal to 
him. A fortnight more might make a respectable 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 331 

"Martinmas pig " of him ; but the popular belief is 
that if he is not killed before the hunter's moon has 
waned, salt will not pickle him, nor wood-smoke 
cure him. It would be curious to speculate how 
much the nation loses every year through this super- 
stition alone. 

I have not, in the course of these Travels, had 
occasion to say much of the religion of the country. 
In ninety-nine rural parishes out of a hundred the 
priest is the best informed and most rational man in 
it, and, as a general rule, gives no countenance to 
such " old wives' tales " as I have mentioned above. 
It is not necessary, however, to go to Portugal to 
learn how even a slight superiority of education 
removes a man in some sort from the sympathies of 
his fellow men, and lessens his influence for good or 
evil. The most reasonable of priests can make little 
head against a parish full of superstitions. It is not 
the .clergy who are to be blamed, but, as I believe, 
the system of education. "Without presuming to 
enter into a comparison of religions, or venturing 
too far into a most dangerous question, it may at 
least be asked whether it be good for any people that 
its school teaching should be so entirely non- secular 
as that of most Eoman Catholic countries, and that 
the purely literary element in the " reading " of the 
rural classes should be scrutinized and hindered by 
the priests of a religion jealous of intellectual 



332 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

enlightenment in its mildest form. This I put 
modestly as a question ; but what I do think past 
being considered as a question, and as being a very 
unquestionable and deplorable fact is that, chiefly in 
consequence of this clerical education and clerical 
scrutiny, it should come to be that a traveller should 
never by any chance find in the hands either of 
yeoman-farmer or peasant any non-religious book 
whatever, always excepting almanacks, in comparison 
with which, that of the late Zadkiel would appear a 
sober astronomical treatise. The rural population 
is the backbone of the kingdom, and ifc is a real mis- 
fortune for the country that it should be destitute of 
any sort of literature. It is said that when an 
American farmer emigrates westward beyond the 
reach of posts and railways, there will be found in 
his log-house, nine times out of ten, besides his 
Bible, a Milton or a Shakespeare or, at the very 
least, a stout " Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy.'* 
A man would have to travel long through Portugal 
to find anything equivalent to such a library as this 
in a Portuguese homestead. 

It is one of the chief objects of foreign travel to 
stimulate the traveller to bring the results of his ob- 
servations to bear upon the solution of political and 
social problems in his own country, and everyone 
knows how the critical tourist may stumble, when 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 333 

he least expects it, upon food for most valuable 
reflection and generalization. 

The Portuguese are, as I have already said, in re- 
gard to a national press, very much what we were a 
hundred and fifty years ago. The immense develop- 
ment of journalism in our own country is, no doubt, 
fully appreciated by us in most of its phases ; but 
has it quite come home to all of us that it is one 
of the consequences of our possession of that 
priceless boon, a free and cheap press, that we 
have the wherewithal to light our domestic fires ? 
Not only are the law reports and the police news 
and the proceedings of Parliament disseminated, 
but an admirable, cheap, and, in fact, an indis- 
pensable fuel is equally distributed among the 
public. In Portugal, this is not so. A taste for 
reading is rare, newspapers are scarce and small, 
and the people do not possess this easy mode of 
rekindling the fires on their kitchen hearths. Under 
these circumstances, what do they do ? They grow 
a plant called carqueja — a sort of broom — they dry 
it in the sun, and it is then carried to all the large 
towns and sold to housekeepers at a farthing for 
three bundles. This natural fire-lighting material 
fortunately grows on waste land, with little and 
often with no cultivation. If the time ever comes 
when our daily and weekly journals cease to circulate 
— their influence has already aroused the indignation 



334 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

of some of our demagogue politicians — it will be 
well to remember that the botanical name of the 
carqueja is genista bidentata. 

I began these Travels by remarking that Portugal 
was no country for the mere tourist ; but I under- 
stand that this enterprising and nearly ubiquitous 
personage has, since this warning was written, 
turned his attention to the capabilities of Portugal 
for his particular purposes. A peaceful country, 
free from brigands, and with a civil and hospitable 
population, might seem to invite invasion of this 
sort, but I compress my advice to such intending 
immigrants into the dissuasive " Don't." They will 
find reasons for it in nearly every chapter I have 
written. The real traveller, the patient, inquiring 
and serious person, will indeed find in Portugal 
" fresh woods and pastures new ; " but though he 
need not possess the physique of a Livingstone, he 
will require qualifications such as the traveller of the 
idle, amateur kind does not possess.* He must be 

* Portugal, and especially Lisbon, enjoyed at one time a reputa- 
tion as a winter residence which it has lost for no good reason that 
I am aware of. The winter climate of Algarve in the extreme south 
might probably, if meteorological statistics existed, be shown to bear 
competition with any South of Europe climate whatever ; but in no 
town of Algarve could the invalid find any sort of comforts ; nor 
would he find such comforts, or English and French speaking people 
anywhere but in the two principal cities of the kingdom. There are 
several good hotels in Lisbon, in all of which French and English 



TRAVELS m PORTUGAL. 335 

a linguist, a born linguist, if he is to make any 
head with the crabbed language of the country in a 
reasonable time. Yery intelligent men are often poor 
language learners, and many a rare fool is a good 
linguist, so that a man need not think much the bet- 
ter of himself for his fluency in a foreign tongue. 

and even German are spoken. The charges are moderate, the cook- 
ing and attendance good. The best are the Braganza and -the 
Central, and Madame Durand's hotel, the latter, kept by a Swiss and 
his English wife, is particularly comfortable. 

The winter climate of Lisbon, to my thinking, resembles that of 
Naples. The mean annual temperature of Oporto is a few degrees 
lower than that of Lisbon ; but the alternations of heat and cold 
are not so great. The Northern Capital is surrounded by vast pine 
forests, and these clearly moderate both the extreme heat and the 
extreme cold, and the winter temperature is probably higher than 
that of Lisbon. The climate of Oporto may be compared to that of 
Rome, in whose latitude it lies ; but I suspect that a comparison 
of meteorological observations would show Oporto to be the more 
genial and healthy climate of the two. 

At Oporto the hotels are not quite so good as at Lisbon, but 
they are good enough. There is, as at Lisbon, a Protestant place of 
worship, and at Oporto is an important and numerous and, I should 
add, hospitable British colony, the most important, perhaps, in 
Southern Europe. There is also an excellent English physician. 
Portugal is within easy reach of Great Britain. Overland, via 
Madrid by rail, Lisbon can be reached in 6, Oporto in 7 days. By 
sea, the fast mail steamers from Southampton reach Lisbon in 3* 
days. Smaller, slower, but very safe and comfortable boats, leaving 
London and Liverpool once or twice every week, reach Lisbon in 5 
and Oporto in 4| days. 

This is, I believe, a fair statement of the capabilities of Portugal 
as a winter residence. I do not advise mere sight-seeing or sporting 
tourists or confirmed invalids to go to Portugal ; but to persons who 
simply wish to escape the English winter, I think the country may 
safely be recommended. 



336 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

Still, the accomplishment is a sine qua non in all 
real foreign travel; and if we ever come to live 
under a purely paternal government, it may suggest 
itself to some future Bismarck (if we are ever blessed 
with one) as a useful reform, and one much to the 
furtherance of British prestige abroad, to compel 
intending travellers on the Continent to pass an 
examination in languages before they step on board 
the steamboat at Folkestone or Dover. Our national 
prestige does unquestionably suffer from our peculiar 
linguistic shortcomings ; and, in sober seriousness, 
is it not a mistake for the members of a proud nation 
to place themselves, as we do, at a signal disadvan- 
tage with almost every foreigner they encounter? 
The English certainly speak worse French than any 
European nation ; and it is probably a great surprise 
to most Englishmen, travelling on the continent for 
the first time, to find how completely this language 
has become a lingua Franca among educated classes 
in all parts of Europe. 

A traveller should do even more than speak 
French fluently, he should be able to discriminate 
between the accents and idioms with which other 
European nations speak it — no very difficult matter, 
and ignorance of which once brought the present 
writer into a somewhat awkward predicament. 

It was on the occasion of finding myself on 
board a large ocean steamer. My cabin companion 



TRAVELS W PORTUGAL. 337 

was a very lively foreign gentleman, whom I set 
down as a Swiss. We talked upon things in 
general, and the conversation falling, as it often will 
fall between chance acquaintances, upon the charac- 
teristics of different nations, my new friend des- 
canted with some humour upon this subject, and 
I followed suit as well as I could. We had expended 
the small artillery of our ridicule upon the foibles of 
the people of nearly every country, excepting always 
England and Switzerland — as I thought, our respec- 
tive fatherlands; we had said smart and foolish 
things about Frenchmen, Germans, Russians and 
Danes, Italians and Spaniards ; and as for Dutch- 
men, I said they would be a great nation, in spite 
of their canals and even their trousers, if it were not 
for that story of the wooden nutmegs ; it has made 
them absurd, and shown them to be rogues the wide 
world over. " Sir" said my acquaintance, with a 
sudden accession of dignity, " I was born at Rotter- 
dam! " 

If I say that a man going to Portugal for any 
other purposes than travel should learn to speak 
Portuguese, I may seem to utter a truism. Yet I 
am by no means persuaded that the advice is good. 
The intending traveller must, as I have said, speak 
the language correctly and fluently. He who goes 
to a country intending to live in it permanently, 

perhaps to trade in it, may indeed wisely hesitate 

' 22 



338 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. . 

before he condescends to master its idiom. A 
stranger who permits himself to be fluent in a 
strange tongue, loses some of that ascendancy which 
a contemptuous indifference to native customs and 
native forms of speech always gives him. Doctor 
Johnson was wrong, probably, after all, when he 
insisted upon speaking Latin instead of French to 
his French acquaintances. To have heard so 
learned a man break down in his French genders 
and his auxiliary verbs, must infallibly have both 
mortified and impressed the Parisian philosophers. 

The judicious impertinence of our resident 
countrymen abroad, who will neither speak the 
language of the natives nor let them speak English, 
but who contrive a barbarous lingua- Franca between 
the two, is, on the whole, therefore, a successful 
mode of convincing foreigners of our superiority, — 
always assuming that it does not make them laugh. 
Of this, .however, there seems to be little danger ; 
even the Pigeon English which is used in China, 
most ridiculous of spoken dialects, and the broken- 
down Hindustani of our people in India (itself a 
speech born in camps and bazaars), never raise a 
smile among Chinamen or Hindoos. The Portu- 
guese of Englishmen in Portugal has some of the 
" pigeon " element in it, and the less educated the 
speaker the more barbarous does the dialect become, 
till in extreme cases Philistinism culminates in 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 339 

refusing altogether to learn the language of the 
country. I once came across an old working man, 
whose schooling had probably been of the slightest, 
and whose pride of race would not allow him to 
compromise his dignity by condescending to speak 
Portuguese at all. " These natives understand 
English well enough if they choose," he said to me, 
" it's only their confounded obstinacy, sir ; if you 
talk loud enough they always understand I " 

There is something more than a new language 
to be learnt by some of our countrymen before they 
travel in Portugal. The natives of the country 
retain the ceremoniousness which was more or less 
universal in Europe a hundred years ago. The 
ceremoniousness of the better bred Italians is as 
nothing to that of the Portuguese. The punctilious- 
ness and formality of their social converse exceed 
those even of the Castilians. In Spain a man may 
safely use the title Usted (your Worship) in addressing 
every class and rank, short of Poyalty itself. Not 
so in Portugal. He shows his ignorance and makes 
himself simply ridiculous if he fails to distinguish at 
least six different classes, with their different forms 
of address. A little beggar boy or girl he will 
speak to, impatiently or charitably, as the case may 
be, but always in the second person singular, " Vai 
te embora" Go thy way; or " Pega n'isto" Take 
this. If the same boy or girl has grown to years of 



340 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

discretion, more ceremony must be employed in the 
refusing or the bestowing of alms, " Nao pode ser" 
It cannot be ; " Va com Deus" Pray go off (in the 
third person, let it be observed). 

A working man takes rank with our magistrates 
at home, and is literally his Worship. Vossemesse is 
itself a contraction of Vossa Merce, and when the 
dignity or the age of an interlocutor hardly entitles 
him to so much honour, the word is contracted to 
Vosse. Little street boys are to each other in their 
play together their Lordships or their "Worships : 
" your Lordship is cheating/' " your Worship has 
stolen my kite," and so on. A tradesman is " The 
Lord," Senhor, or " Your Lordship," Vossa 
Senhoria, and these titles are applicable a good 
way up and down in the social scale. "Your 
Excellency," Vossa Kxcellencia, is reserved for per- 
sons of noble rank or high official position, and 
every lady below the rank of the Queen may also 
safely and properly be addressed as Your Excellency. 

All these various titles of course require the 
use of the third person singular, as in Italian. The 
second person of the plural, formerly used by the 
Portuguese, has now for several generations been 
almost confined, in " polite " Portuguese at least, to 
prayers and addresses to the Deity. 

The forms used in letter- writing are endless. 
How to begin and how to end, what margin to 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 341 

leave, where to sign one's name, when to write 
one's address as A Casa de Vossa Excellencia, Your 
Excellency's own house, and when to avoid this 
inexpensive kind of generosity; when to end with 
the formal Deus guarde a Vossa Excellencia, May 
God preserve your Excellency, and when to assure 
your correspondent, as is the common form, that 
you venerate him, and are the most devoted of his 
servants — all this is a necessary part of the educa- 
tion of a traveller who desires to pass for a well- 
bred and courteous person. There is a formula for 
almost everything, and in circles of not the very 
highest class this sort of social culture is, as might 
be supposed, most excessive. 

In the remoter parts of Portugal a curious form 
of salutation prevails, and prevails almost univer- 
sally ; a man meeting his acquaintance, or even a 
perfect stranger, says, " Louvado seja Nosso Seritwr 
Jesus Chris to" Praised be Jesus Christ our Lord; 
and the answer is always, " E para sew/pre seja lou- 
vado" And praised for ever and ever. It is still 
customary in most parts of Portugal to say " Viva ! ' 
May you live ! when a man sneezes, equivalent to 
the " God bless you," which prevails among certain 
homely folk with us under similar circumstances. 
But in good society this custom is no longer fashion- 
able, though one's Portuguese friend, if one happens 
to sneeze in his presence, will sometimes say the 



342 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

word half under his breath, and with a slight depre- 
catory smile, as if to convey — " I know, my dear 
sir, that it is not quite the thing to say viva ! but 
my interest in you is so strong that I infringe 
les bienseances, to show how much I wish you 
well.'' 

A Jewish acquaintance, whom I have already 
mentioned, told me of a curious Talmud ian legend 
to account for this singular practice, as old as 
Homer, and common, I believe, to every branch of 
mankind, of blessing a man who sneezes. When 
human beings were first created, the legend runs, 
they were very loosely put together, and a man's 
first sneeze would shake him so completely to pieces. 
as to be followed by his immediate break-up and 
dissolution. In process of time, however, the bodies 
of men growing more substantial — the molecular 
particles perhaps, as Professor Tyndall would argue,, 
more firmly compacted — sneezing was not invariably 
accompanied by instant death, and bystanders, see- 
ing a man sneeze with impunity, would express at 
once their astonishment and their congratulations 
by some such formula as Viva./ — God bless you t 
and so forth. If our modern atomic philosophers 
can bring themselves to believe in this theorv — and 

O t/ 

they can hardly be looked upon as men of a very 
sceptical habit of mind — they will no doubt thank 
me for this addition to the fabric of a cosmogony 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 343 

which they are industriously building up for our 
benefit. 

To return to Portuguese manners, it might be 
imagined that so courteous a people, and one whose 
communication with each other was so hedged about 
with formal observances, would be verv little given 
to the use of " naughty words" in conversation. It 
is sad to say that this is not the case. They are 
terribly hard swearers on occasion, but a connois- 
seur in conversational blasphemy would find little to 
approve in the range of oaths used by this small 
nation. The Portuguese is neither so free nor so 
frequent a swearer as the Spaniard, and he is not 
nearly so ingenious a one as the Italian. Like all 
southerners, his oaths have a tendency to be gross 
or indecent ; and many of these people, when they 
are impatient or excited, use expressions that would 
shock an English bargee, and raise blushes in the 
mess-room of a cavalry regiment. 

The inefficacy of blasphemy as a mode of expres- 
sion, must, I suppose, have come home to every 
practiser of the art of swearing. An imprecation 
may start by being as profane or as abominable as 
it can be, and yet with a little use it rubs off its 
wickedness or its grossness and therewith much of 
its point. Gentlemen in Spain with some claim to 
decent manners, and even women (not ladies) of 
quite respectable morality, use expressions which 



344 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

are absolutely untranslatable; and, to come nearer 
home, that fierce and exceedingly inappropriate 
epithet which our fastidious newspaper reporters 

print bl dy, has been so weakened by use, that a 

recent French Dictionary-maker renders it quite 
correctly " adj., fam. tres,fort." 

There is, it must be admitted, something singu- 
larly startling and bloodthirsty, at first hearing it, 
in the shouted "Morraf" Let him die! — of a 
riotous Portuguese mob ; but the generally good- 
humoured crowds of a Portuguese city are no more 
desirous of the death of the momentary object of their 
evil wishes, than an angry English election crowd 
would really like to see Mr. Disraeli guillotined, or 
Mr. Bright brought to the gallows. 

This whole subject of swearing is one to which 
literary men and philosophers have, perhaps, as yet 
hardly done full justice. An old Scotch lady has 
been heard to lament the decline in these islands of 
this once fashionable practice ; it was she contended, 
" a great set-off to conversation." No one can 
deny that oaths, to some extent, take the place of 
ideas. If I were further from the necessary end of 
these Travels, I should be glad further to moralize 
on this delicate theme ; I must instead content myself 
with a comparison. As contrasted with almost every 
European nation, we are monotonous in our oaths, 
and the art, it seems to me, is getting with us more 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 345 

and more confined to the less educated and intelli- 
gent among us; but I will boldly assert, for the 
honour of my countrymen, that after some expe- 
rience of the blasphemy of foreign nations, there is no 
oath so mouth-filling, so complete in every way, so 
simple, and so utterly stupid (for this is a great 
recommendation in swearing), as the fine, sounding 
imprecation which is uttered ten thousand times a 
day at home, and has prevailed in these Islands 
since the time of Froissart. 

We have extracted a practical lesson or two 
from the Portuguese kitchen-garden. There is 
nothing to be learnt from their treatment of flowers, 
and but little from their management of orchards. 
They possess, indeed, many fine orchards of fruit 
trees, and groves of oranges and lemons, of olives 
and mulberries, and extensive forests of pine, ches- 
nut, and cork-trees, but they are far behind the 
Germans in forestal science, and the French — the 
masters of us all — in pomology. The Portuguese 
oranges grown in the interior are as large and good 
as those from St. Michael's, but the oranges which 
come from the seaboard districts — the only ones ever 
exported to Great Britain — are poor in quality ; for 
which I can give no reason except bad cultivation, 
seeing that the best oranges in many other countries 
grow within reach of the sea breezes. 



346 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

The olives of Portugal — an important food of 
the people — are gathered riper than in Spain, 
France, or Italy, and are small and dark coloured. 
They are probably more wholesome, and, in my 
opinion, far better to eat, than the olives of any 
other country; so good, indeed, and so cheap that 
it is a wonder they are not brought to this country 
in place of the hard, half-ripe and expensive olives of 
France. The oil made from them is generally badly 
made, but when properly purified it is quite as good, 
though by no means as saleable, as the fine oils of 
Italy. 

The climate of Portugal appears to be identical 
in many respects with that of Japan; and many 
Japanese shrubs and flowers, which dwindle and 
fail in the open air in France and England, grow 
magnificently in Portugal. Chief among them is 
the camellia, brought, it is said, about ninety 
years ago from Japan, and often seen in Portugal 
of the size of a full grown apple-tree. The 
camellia seems to require a rather damp climate, 
and perhaps a granite soil, for the tree is a weak- 
ling in the dry air of Lisbon, but thrives close 
by at Cintra, and still better at Oporto, where 
many new and beautiful varieties are grown, — 
among others the sweet-scented kind,* of whose 

*■ A variety, if I am not mistaken, of C. myrtifolia. It has a 
beautiful, compact, rose-coloured blossom, with very close, regular, 



TRAVELS W PORTUGAL. 347 

existence no English gardener or botanist to whom 
I have spolen seems to be aware. Lovely as 
the flowers of the camellia are singly, the tree itself, 
in full bloom, is by no means an attractive sight. A 
camellia-tree with a thousand flowers on it might be 
supposed, with its compact growth and its shiny 
leaves of rich green, to be an exquisitely beautiful 
object, but it is nothing of the sort. The flowers, 
as they begin to fade, get to be of a dingy brown, 
and hang a long time on the tree, and a camellia- 
tree in full blossom has by far the largest proportion 
of its flowers withered and ugly. As a flowering 
shrub the camellia is not comparable to the poin- 
settia, which blossoms to perfection in the Algarve 
provinces, with its mass of intense scarlet bloom 
looking like a richly-coloured silken drapery hung* 
on the branches of the tree ; or to the white datura. 
A datura shrub in full bloom, with its thousands of 
pendent flower bells reflected in a pool of water, is a 
thing not soon to be forgotten. 

In their treatment of trees the Portuguese have 
a practice which, if I could be quite certain of its 
efficacy, I should not hesitate to proclaim to be an 
invention of singular value and importance. It was 
while travelling through the eastern part of the Pro- 
vince of Alemtejo, — the great province which lies 

waxy and rather pointed petals. The flower has a faint, honey- 
sweet scent. 



848 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

immediately to the south of the river Tagus, — that I 
one day came upon a farmer boring a hole with an 
auger into the very heart of a large cork-tree. Hav- 
ing driven the instrument about a foot into the tree 
he took from his pocket a small bottle, and was pro- 
ceeding to pour its contents into the hole he had 
made. At this juncture, my curiosity overcoming 
me, I dismounted and asked him what he was about. 
He showed me the bottle, which contained about a 
spoonful of quicksilver, and told me that this being 
poured into the hole, the tree would eventually die. 
He told me that a few drops of quicksilver so applied 
were enough to destroy the largest and most flourish- 
ing tree. Cause and effect seemed to me — and still 
seem — strangely disproportioned, and I cannot 
speak from any actual observation of the results as 
to the efficacy of this curious method of killing 
trees ; nor, assuming that it is efficacious, can I 
account in any rational way for the destructive 
effects of so small a quantity of mercury. Perhaps 
it permeates the tubes of the vegetable tissue ; per- 
haps it mechanically arrests the ascending sap ; 
perhaps, combining with the chemical constituents 
of the sap, it forms some powerful mercurial salt, 
poisonous to vegetation; perhaps the hole in the 
heart of the tree is itself fatal to it. I can only say 
that the practice, as I have described it, is not con- 
fined to one part of Portugal, and is at least be- 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 349 

lieved in by the Portuguese. It might be worth 
while to try the experiment. If it be true that a 
tree can be so easily and cheaply destroyed, the 
value of such a fact to a colonist in uncleared forest 
land would be simply incalculable. I give the receipt 
for what it is worth. I do not vouch for it. I do 
not even believe in it. " It may be true," as a 
Welshman says in one of our old comedies, " but it 
is very impossible." 

As farming is, in an agricultural country, the 
most important and interesting of subjects, I will 
bring this Chapter to a conclusion with a few words 
upon the matter. It is needless to say that farming 
in Portugal is the reverse of scientific. The owners 
of great estates in the midland districts of the 
country are, indeed, at last turning their attention 
to the cultivation of their lands by machinery and 
by steam; but Portuguese agriculture in general 
is quite two hundred years behind what it is in our 
own country. For instance, the rotation of crops 
involves a simple principle which I could never 
get a Portuguese farmer to entertain. He could 
perfectly understand exhaustion of the land, but 
not that certain constituents only of the soil could 
be taken out of it ; not that it could be exhausted 
for one crop and not for another. In practice, 
indeed, the Portuguese disregard the great principle 
thus involved ; and they disregard it with curious 



350 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

impunity. On farms suitably situated for irrigation, 
fair crops of maize have been raised, summer after 
summer, for over a hundred years. Jethro Tull 
himself could never have proposed to carry his 
famous and fallacious principle so far as this. 

How, then, it may be asked, can the Minho 
farmer do what the English theorist failed of ac- 
complishing ; how can he fly in the face of organic 
chemistry and all experience, and secure a valu- 
able grain crop year after year from the same 
field? 

The answer is a curious one, and the solution of 
the problem is in perfect accordance with scientific 
law. Baron Liebig himself would have admitted its 
soundness. Every Minhote farm has adjoining it a 
piece of poor land occupied with gorse ; it is usually 
a part of the pine forest. I have already described 
how the gorse growth is cu every three years. 
The cutting is a root and branch operation, effected 
with the strong country hoe. The gorse is literally 
scraped up, and with it are cut mosses, bent-grasses, 
gentians, ferns, and a liberal portion of the surface 
earth itself. All this is thrown into the cattle byres, 
into which no particle of straw (as with us at home) 
is ever cast ; and this system naturally results in three 
very appreciable advantages. First, a much larger 
quantity of manure is made than with the straw- 
fodder system, and, all the straw being used as food, 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 351 

the land of course " carries more stock." Secondly, 
the seeds of plants taken from the forest patches are 
of species whose seed will not germinate in culti- 
vated land, or having germinated will not thrive, 
and the fields are not in consequence made weed- 
dirty. Thirdly, these forest perennials of slower 
growth and development are fuller of enriching in- 
gredients — phosphates, carbon, alkalis, and I know 
not what besides — than straw-fodder, and benefit 
the land accordingly ; they put into it probably 
what it never had before ; and the earthy particles 
which go with them are a direct transfusion, as it 
were, of fresh blood into the veins of the soil, 
emptied and exhausted by successive grain crops. 
This is the explanation of the mystery, and it is for 
our farmers at home to say whether they think the 
plan worth adopting. It is not, I think, science 
that will try to dissuade them. 

To return to the farm system ; the growing of 
maize (the chief bread corn) and the fattening of 
cattle bred in the highlands of the interior, are the 
two chief operations of the farmer, where the small 
farm system prevails. The oxen are stall-fed, 
because it would be wasteful to let them tread 
down the tiny fields in feeding themselves. During 
the summer they are given the male flower pannicles 
of the maize, and the thinnings of the maize fields, 
and straw of various kinds; in winter they get 



352 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

clover, rye and other grasses, and maize straw — a 
comparatively sweet and fattening food. 

Instead of mowing the grass fields with scythes, 
which will cut from half to three quarters of an acre 
a day, the Portuguese use tiny saw-toothed hooks 
that will cut but the fourth or sixth part of that 
area in a long summer's day. The grass thus pain- 
fully and slowly reaped is carried on men's or 
women's heads often the distance of a mile ; and 
yet, wonderful to say, cattle so fed and fattened, 
can be sent to England, pay freight and insurance, 
and sell at an excellent profit ; and this exportation 
begun some twenty years ago, has reached large 
proportions, and has had much to do with 
the enrichment of the farmers of the northern 
Provinces. 

The common plough in Portugal is formed of a 
crooked branch, and is so small that a man can 
carry it on his shoulder, and the friable soil is rather 
scratched than ploughed. The maize is sown broad- 
cast, and hand-hoed two or three times in the course 
of the year, and irrigated with little driblets of 
water led to its roots with all economy of the 
precious fluid and a skilfulness which it is plea- 
sant to watch, — the bare-footed labourer quickly 
cutting out with his hoe narrow channels for the 
flowing water, and stamping out a little basin round 
each plant. 



TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 353 

A Scotch or English farmer would, I have no 
doubt, laugh at the clumsy ploughs and harrows, 
the absence of labour-saving machines, and the 
seeming waste of manual labour ; but it may be 
questioned whether, looking to the smallness of 
farms and the abundance of labour, the ridicule 
would be altogether justified. The Portuguese 
farmer makes his farm pay — and pay well — and, 
after all, this is the surest test of farming. Until 
quite recently he has had, in the North at least, a 
wonderfully prosperous time ; but changes are taking 
place even in Portugal, and I doubt whether the old 
system and the old order of things will continue long 
unmodified and unreformed. Mines and railways 
compete with the farmer for his labourers, and emi- 
gration to Brazil is going on rapidly. The wages of 
day labour have nearly doubled in thirty years. 
Already farms are less fully cultivated than they 
used to be. The prices of cattle and Indian corn 
cannot continue always to rise in sympathy with the 
rise in wages, for cattle must follow the prices of 
the London market, and if maize gets much dearer, it 
will be cheapened again by importation. One of two 
things must therefore shortly take place : either 
the n on- cultivation of the poorer lands, or a reform 
in Portuguese agriculture. 

So it is that even the yeoman farmer on the 

remote hills of Portugal makes part of the great 

23 



354 TRAVELS IN PORTUGAL. 

commercial system of the world, and gains or loses 
by a rise or fall in the price of corn in Chicago 
and Odessa, or of butcher's meat in Leadenhall 
Market. 



THE END. 



Simmons & Bottcn, Printers, Shoe Lane, Fleet Street. 



